


Actually, It's About Ethics in Tech Journalism

by rillrill



Series: Best of Enemies [6]
Category: Silicon Valley (TV)
Genre: Anxiety, Emotional Constipation, Established Relationship, M/M, Outing
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-07-18
Updated: 2016-07-18
Packaged: 2018-07-24 16:43:13
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 7
Words: 50,079
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7515607
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/rillrill/pseuds/rillrill
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The difference between "in a relationship" and not can be as little as one massive grudge against a gossip blog, one major industry news scandal, and being scared out of one's goddamn wits.</p><p>Or: how Richard Hendricks learned to stop worrying and accept the inevitable, with more than a little help from the billionaire genius asshole supervillain who loves him.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Actually, It's About Ethics in Tech Journalism

**Author's Note:**

> For the six of you who ship this: here you go.
> 
> If you're squeamish about depictions of vomit, uh, maybe this isn't the fic for you? That's about it.

Ultimately, the most complicated part in years to come would be remembering how any of this started.  
  
Something about a bathroom, Richard thinks. An arbitration and a bathroom and also being scared out of his wits that he was about to lose everything, that nobody was really on his side — sheer panic tempered only by a spike of arousal as Gavin Belson boxed him in against that bathroom counter, hands at his collar, tying a single knot that made Richard’s stomach twist into a dozen of its own. That was, he thinks, the start of something.  
  
But now it's been a year and a half, closer to two, since the start of all that, and Richard has no idea what they even are anymore. Dating? Fucking? Seeing each other? Everything but the very basic description, the specific physicality of what they do, sounds like an imposition and like more than Richard wants it to be.  
  
They’re not dating. He gets that out of the way early on. “We’re not dating,” he’d said, maybe two months into the thing, and Gavin had acted as if even the mere idea were a ludicrous proposition, a bridge he’d never personally deign to cross. Which had felt good. It was a solid foundation upon which to build — nothing. He’s built nothing, because they are nothing.

(And what of the fact that he spends most of his weekends at Gavin’s, and that he sends out his laundry and pays someone else to run his errands so as to maximize this time? It’s just that he gets more done there, with Erlich and the others well out of his hair. Gavin leaves him alone during the day; they have the afternoons and nights. It’s comfortable. Symbiotic. The anemone and the clownfish. Or, like, the second metaphor he thinks of.)

So the point is: It’s a Friday. It's more or less a night like any other. Richard arrives at Gavin's in the early evening, ducking out of work and citing some nebulous meeting to attend. Nobody asks for specifics. They haven't asked for specifics in months.

Part of Richard feels like he'd be better off just sitting everyone down to tell them. Ripping off the bandage in one go and having that be the end of it. It's what Gavin would do, oddly enough, he thinks. Gavin, for all of his faults — and the myriad number of them doesn't escape Richard even now — likes to think of himself as being fair, and as honest as possible, and he's even made comments to that extent. That Richard shouldn't feel obligated to hide their entanglement from his friends. That there are lawyers and contracts that could easily keep the whole thing under wraps if he wanted to open up about it a little. 

"I'm not making my friends sign an NDA about who I'm fucking," he'd said incredulously when Gavin had first brought it up. Gavin had laughed it off, agreed that the notion was, perhaps, a bit much — but the uncomfortable silence that lingered between them for the rest of the night had said more. But that's fine, Richard thinks; he's not here to cater to Gavin's ego. Gavin Belson knows exactly who and what they are.

They aren't in a relationship. That much is certain.

  
Because relationships are a totally different thing. Richard’s been in a couple, okay, he knows how it goes? Two. He’s been in two. That’s enough, though; he gets how it goes. There was no timeline between him and Gavin; there was no convention, just contention. A year and a half into a relationship, they would definitely have already said I love you. That much seems obvious. He would’ve said it first, like he did with both of his exes. It would’ve been a whole thing, a big deal, and then they would have said it again and again until they finally got sick of saying it.

In a real relationship, they wouldn't struggle to come up with reasons to pretend to be nice to each other. It wouldn't be a whole thing that necessitated, like, elaborate schemes and hate-fucking and a secret Hooli calendar with dates blocked out for the express purpose of sneaking off to out-of-town properties to fuck each other, like, more loudly and efficiently and in more exciting contexts. In a real relationship, they'd call that "keeping it interesting" and "how we keep the spark alive." In this thing they do, they don't talk about it. Hence the whole fucking calendar.

In a real relationship, Gavin wouldn't snort with derision every time Richard checked the calendar on his iPhone in front of him. Even though Richard's pretty sure he's just jealous, because everyone knows that everyone at Hooli is dying for one, but if Gavin sees you with an Apple device on the campus, your Hooli ass is Hooli grass. Richard's pretty sure that flaunting his iPhone - which isn't even that great, although it's at least better than the Hooli phone - would be grounds for termination if they had any other kind of working relationship other than, like, sworn nemeses. But in a real relationship, it wouldn't be a long-running bone of contention, either. So, like. It's a draw.  
  
In a real relationship, they’d be different. Tender. Nice to each other all the time, not just when they’re too tired to feign resistance. In a real relationship, the whole thing wouldn’t be a fucking secret, for God’s sake. He knows how it goes. This isn’t a _whole thing_. It’s just… a thing.

Gavin's house smells like garlic when Richard lets himself in the side door, laying his index finger over the lockpad scanner. He takes the long way to the kitchen. He's not hungry, necessarily, but he could probably eat.

"Ah, you're early," Gavin comments as Richard sets down his laptop bag and slides into his stool at the kitchen island. They always eat here, never in the dining room; Gavin feels the size of the dining room dwarfs the intimacy between them, throwing off his energy. It couldn't possibly bother Richard less. He'll eat in the kitchen. "I meant to have dinner done by the time you got here, I wasn't certain —"

"What're you making?" Richard asks, curiosity too much to resist in the face of whatever the smell coming from the stove might be. 

Gavin's mouth twists into a proud little smile. “Tomato tarts with goat cheese and prosciutto," he says. "Not done yet. All in good time. You can get yourself some water, glass of wine…”

"Wine, yeah," Richard says too quickly. Anything to forget the afternoon's disastrous board meeting. He fumbles with the bottle opener, struggling to uncork the bottle of Napa red Gavin indicates, and after a couple torturous minutes he pops it, pouring a generous measure into one of the two glasses on the counter. "Cheers," he says, raising his glass, and then takes a long sip. 

Gavin is quiet, mostly focused on the food in front of him. Richard studies him from the corner of his eye, looking away every so often as not to arouse suspicion. He doesn't often see him like this: relaxed, intently focused, the sleeves of his old Hooli quarter-zip fleece pushed nearly up to his elbows. He looks tired, and perhaps a little older than he normally appears, but it's not off-putting. If anything, it's humanizing. 

"You look good," Richard volunteers over his wine glass, and Gavin looks up from the range.

"Do I," he says, sounding bemused. 

Richard swallows. "Yeah. Don't let it go to your head or whatever."

"Too late." Gavin gives him a small smile, knowing and smug, and goes back to the sauce. 

It's a night like pretty much all of their other nights, casual dinner in the kitchen giving way to a couple more glasses of wine on the couch before they move to the bedroom. Mostly physical. Richard is fine with that. He pretends his skin isn't screaming for it, the interminable week since he's last been touched like this feeling like way too much in the moment. Overwhelming. When they finish, Gavin flips over onto his side and says, "Stay?"

"Yeah, okay," Richard says after some hesitation. He has nowhere to be the next day. He has his laptop in case anything comes up. Everyone should be used to this by now.

So he stays. He falls asleep next to Gavin, under thousand-thread-count sheets, not touching. When they wake up tangled together, he doesn't squirm away or otherwise remove himself; just stays, letting Gavin hold him — encouraging it, truth be told. He doesn't hate it. Richard doesn't hug, he doesn't do much physical contact at all, has just never particularly enjoyed it. But this, for some reason, is different.

Saturday morning arrives and he sleeps in past eight; wakes up to Gavin opening the blackout curtains, dressed for his morning run and looking irritatingly awake and lucid. He cups Richard's chin to kiss him and adds, "There's yogurt and granola. I'll be in the gym." And then he's off. And Richard lies on his back in the bed that has somehow started to feel more like his own than the one back at the incubator. But it's fine. It's nothing. It's casual.

And then, three months later, it’s not casual anymore.

 

* * *

**_  
Gavin Belson Is Totally Gay, People_ **

_By: C.J. Cantwell_  
_Published: August 31  
_ _Filed under: Exclusive, Gavin Belson, Hooli_

_By now, you've likely heard the latest on Gavin Belson's recent Hooli woes. There's been a crush of coverage stemming primarily from the high-profile back-to-back failures of Hooli XYZ, Nucleus, and near-failure Endframe, all of which operated under Belson's leadership before last year's last-ditch Jack Barker hire turned it around. Belson, 50, is hardly publicity-shy, as far as CEOs go. Thanks to years of sycophantic cover stories by nearly every major magazine in the country, we know all about his mansion, his "spiritual adviser," his early-morning yoga. But what no one ever says out loud: Belson is gay._

_"Of course he's gay. Why does it matter?" It matters because northern California and the tech and VC businesses are still home to an overwhelmingly white, male, heterosexual hegemony. Execs show preference to entrepreneurs who remind them of themselves. It's not insignificant for a major player like Belson, a vocal advocate for the nebulous intent of "making the world a better place," to remain mum on a subject that would almost certainly disrupt the Valley itself, were he to come out. Belson talks a big game about his philanthropy and political idealism, yet where his own personal life is concerned, identity politics are off-limits._

_I think it explains a lot about Belson: His disdain for the conventional and his quest to overturn the establishment while remaining firmly at the helm of his own international corporation, certainly. His heated and tumultuous relationship with late former business partner turned VC rival Peter Gregory, yes. The only thing that's strange about Belson's sexuality: why has he been so paranoid about its discovery for so long?_

_Gavin Belson is gay, people. Let's face the facts here. Glass closets benefit nobody but their inhabitants._

 

* * *

  
The piece drops on a Monday and immediately, it's the biggest journalism-adjacent shit hurricane anyone in their office has ever seen, even now, as a little shit-tropical storm developing just off the coast of the San Francisco Bay. Richard reads it with a pounding pulse, fingers twitching, eyes darting rabbit-like around the room in immediate, major-key terror. That he makes it to the end without seeing his own name come up once in print is only cold comfort. It's only a matter of time, he thinks, suddenly very much afraid. A matter of time.  
  
"Holy shit, you guys," Dinesh says from behind his monitor. "Are you seeing this? Check CodeRag —"

"Gavin Belson Is Totally Gay, People," adds Gilfoyle, slurping his soba and snickering. "Like it took a team of investigative journalists to tell you that."

"Richard? Are you all right?" asks Jared, but Richard doesn't answer. He nods enthusiastically, the way he might nod were he choking on a glass of water and unwilling to resist a few strong thumps on the back from a colleague. He nods again, and excuses himself, out to the backyard and the pool.

He feels his phone buzzing in his pocket. Pulls it out. Incoming call from _G B._

Perhaps against his better judgment, the answers.

"Did you do this?!" Gavin snarls through the line, and Richard almost drops the phone. "We signed papers! A mutual non-disclosure agreement! If this was all some kind of long con to you, so help me god, I will bury your ass in court for breach of contract —"

"Gavin, relax, I didn't do this," Richard says, too fast, stumbling on his words in his haste to get them out. "Seriously, I didn't — why would I out you? Why would I invite speculation?"

"I don't know, perhaps to get back at me for some slights in the past, or the Daddy thing I tried to get you to try, or —"

"Yeah, well, I didn't." He can't fucking believe this. Gavin doesn't get to accuse him of this. Not after everything they've — it's not happening. "Swear to god. I'll show you my phones, emails, whatever. I have a vested interest in keeping this private too, you know."

Gavin is silent, and then he heaves a sigh. "I don't know where my head is, Richard," he says. "Come over tonight."

"It's Monday," Richard says uncertainly.

"I know." And then Gavin hangs up.

He should go back inside, finish the rest of his lunch, but instead he stays. He sits under the shade, staring at the pool, the light breeze making ripples in the water and casting tie-dye light onto the side of the house. He turns it over in his mind, over and over. 

The question is obvious: who? And the secondary question: why? The followup seems obvious. Power, betrayal, sabotage. Some desire to see the final nail driven into the coffin that currently holds what remains of Gavin's Hooli career. It could have been anyone. Could've been —

Anyone in the house, even.

They have the means. They have the reason. They're not bound by any contracts, and it's not as though Richard's been subtle. Fuck. It could've been any of them — Jared, with his quiet acceptance of Richard's own choices not-so-subtly masking a world of disappointment. Erlich, ever churlish about the mere idea of being excluded from anything exciting. Dinesh or Gilfoyle, for shits and giggles, out of long-simmering resentment toward Hooli and Gavin himself. Bighead, out of sheer stupidity. Any of them.

The panic whites him out, his body trembling, knees practically giving out as he runs inside. Shaking. His voice breaks as he leans on the back of his chair and asks, "Did one of you do this because of me and Gavin?"

He's met with a series of blank stares. "You and Gavin?" Dinesh asks, slow and dry. "What the fuck are you talking about, Richard?"

Richard frowns, waves a hand through the air. "You know. You probably all know by now, right?"

"Richard, I'm not sure what you're talking about —" Jared says, politely, but insistently. "If you're suggesting that one of us leaked a piece of common-knowledge information about Gavin Belson because of his extended vendetta against you —"

"Hold on," Gilfoyle says. "Holy shit. Richard, are you _fucking Gavin Belson_?"

Richard takes a breath. "You didn't all know? I thought you —"

Blank stares, silence. Jared's pale skin has assumed a vaguely greenish tinge, but Dinesh and Gilfoyle both look almost triumphant —

“Fuck."

He spends the better part of an hour trying to explain himself, but in the end, there’s no real explanation. “It’s complicated,” he says over and over, “it’s hard to explain,” and Erlich has long stormed out, but Dinesh and Gilfoyle both look gleefully fascinated, and Bighead doesn’t seem to bat an eye, just nods and says, “Cool. I always thought he was totally into you.”  
  
It’s Jared who doesn’t react much at all, and that’s what Richard finds worrisome. He barely acknowledges the conversation taking place, just rearranges the SWOT board and taps away on his laptop and pops in and out of the kitchen with a sort of determined gait that Richard recognizes. It’s the _nothing-wrong-here_ look. It’s his weird fucking Kimmy Schmidt, everything-will-be-fine-if-I-smile-enough attitude.  
  
“Jared,” he murmurs as he dips into the kitchen for a Red Bull after an hour of the other guys grilling him. “Do you think I’m totally fucked here? Like, in terms of the press?”  
  
Jared looks at him curiously. “I don’t think so,” he says slowly. “Granted, certain bloggers might have more lax codes of ethics than traditional news reporters. But as a private citizen, you ought to be safe here. I don’t know who would bother to bring you into the story if they didn’t have a real reason to. That would be slander —”  
  
“Libel,” Richard corrects him automatically. “Slander is spoken untruths, libel refers to the printed equivalent. Allegations of libel are technically easier to prove in court, but nobody ever does — sorry, not important. The point is, that’s not going to happen.”  
  
“Never say never,” Jared says quietly. “With Gavin, who knows… Richard?”  
  
But Richard’s already halfway out the door. “I’ll be back in a while,” he says to no one in particular. “Taking a drive.”

 

* * *

  
When Richard gets to Gavin’s house that night, he’s already made up his mind to tread lightly around the subject. He senses that it’s not going to be a normal night for them. Gavin’s tense, prowling the enormous house like a caged animal, shirt untucked and looking distracted. 

“Do you want to play chess?” Richard volunteers. His mind is also already made up to let Gavin win. He doubts he could suffer any further blows to his ego. But Gavin shakes his head stiffly.

“Later,” he says. “This is — the timing isn’t optimal.”

“Right.” Richard shoves his hands into the pockets of his sweatshirt and offers a half shrug. “Should I…”

“Don’t be ridiculous.” Gavin doesn’t even allow him to finish the sentence. “Of course I want you to stay, Richard.”

“I didn’t — just so you know, this really wasn’t me,” Richard clarifies quickly, the words coming out in an undignified mudslide of feeling. “I know it could seem like it, but I wouldn’t — I think you’re, you know, I signed the NDA and all, and I don’t want you to break up with me. Or sue me. Or both,” he adds with a nervous little gag-laugh, and Gavin finally turns back to look at him.

“Of course it wasn’t your fault,” Gavin says, and he’s eerily calm as he gestures for Richard to join him at the window. Richard does, the nerves in his stomach still churning like he’s set them to spin cycle. Gavin reaches out as if to touch him, then hesitates: Richard nods. And Gavin runs a hand over his lower back, the heat of his palm tangible even though Richard’s oxford and hoodie.

Richard stands by him, staring out the window, feeling remarkably useless and stupid — shouldn’t he at least, like, offer to do Gavin a favor? Do something nice for him? What do you do when your billionaire boyfriend ( _not boyfriend,_ where did that phrasing come from?) gets outed by the terrible Valley gossip website he’s already spent more than his fair share of time and money trying to destroy and then control? How do you soften that blow? Sex, he thinks, but even that might be a miss; Gavin’s not touching him like it’s a prelude to anything. “I could cook something for you,” Richard volunteers, shoving his hands deep into his hoodie pockets, and Gavin shoots him a look from the corner of his eye.

“I appreciate the gesture,” he says, “though I don’t have much of an appetite right now.”

“Okay,” says Richard. “Is there any way I can, you know. Help you?”

Gavin regards him coolly, hands in his pants pockets, dress-shirt sleeves rolled to the elbow. “I’m going out to my screaming solarium alone,” he says. Not unkindly, but firmly. “Don’t leave. Be here when I get back. We’ll proceed as if nothing out of the ordinary has happened.”

“Right,” says Richard. “Uh. Your — screaming solarium?”

“I had it specifically constructed to trap and contain negative energy,” Gavin says. “When I feel overcome with rage that cannot be turned into a positive source of motivation, I go out there and I scream.” He shrugs. “If you’re hungry, there’s polenta in the fridge.”

He leaves, shoes barely making noise all the way down the hall of the cavernous house, and somewhere across the residence Richard hears a door slam.

When Gavin comes back, negative energy ostensibly screamed out, Richard is still waiting nervously, picking at a plate of his leftovers. He was hungry, before he came over here, but the tension of the evening has put him all on edge. Gavin drops an affectionate hand on his shoulder, squeezing down as he passes him in the kitchen. He puts on the electric kettle and begins spooning loose green tea into an infuser. Richard watches. He still has no fucking clue what to say. And the afternoon still weighs heavily on him: the catastrophic, stomach-churning realization that even if the rest of the guys didn’t know about him and Gavin yet, they certainly do now. His phone’s been curiously silent, and he wonders if there’s been some kind of meeting behind his back, a we-need-to-talk-about-Richard CYA meeting. 

He wonders, but doesn’t dare to think clearly, about how Jared is taking the news.

The tea kettle whistles, and Gavin takes it off the stove and busies himself with the infuser, still strangely silent. With his white ceramic mug in front of him, he joins Richard at the kitchen island, his walk calm and deliberate. Richard doesn’t like this. He knows this Gavin well, and he doesn’t like him; this isn’t the Gavin he’s become oddly fond of, the weird asshole who drags him, kicking and screaming and sometimes stress-hurling, into new and unfamiliar and exotically bizarre territory. This is the Gavin that preceded the one he likes. The Gavin who attempted, multiple times, to destroy his company and his career over a compression algorithm. This Gavin is viciously petty, and viciousness delights him, and he revels in finding new and justified excuses for dramatic acts of vengeance.

There’s a not-insignificant part of Richard who would like to see where this goes. Gavin’s tendency toward dramatics has always fascinated him, even when he was the target, when it was nemesis this and insolent that and every moment was unpredictable and scary and weird and white-hot. He forks up the last of his dinner and drops the silverware back on his plate with a clatter. 

“So,” Gavin says, looking at his steaming mug with vague disinterest. “I know we’re on the same page here. I believe that you had nothing to do with this.”

Richard shrugs. “Yeah.” His back pops with tension as he shifts in position in the chair, and he sees Gavin shoot him a look.

“I’ll take that game of chess now,” Gavin says instead of questioning him further, and Richard immediately pushes away his empty plate.

“I’ll go set it up,” he says, hopping off the island, and he doesn’t wait for Gavin’s follow-up before he strides down the hall to the den, nerves churning in his gut. 

* * *

A couple hours later, they’re deep into a competitive game, and Richard is calmer. Gavin seems laser-focused on the task at hand, and it gives Richard comfort to see him locked in on something that doesn’t involve the imminent destruction of anyone else’s livelihood. For now, at least.  

"We're living in an age where the world is the most advanced it's ever been," Gavin muses, "and also the most primitive."

Richard coughs. "Ah," he says. "I mean. We've got drones and all."

Gavin shakes his head. "I'm still talking about CodeRag, Richard. Were you even paying attention?"

Richard sighs. He sighs and uses his knight to knock a pawn out of the way, sending it skidding off the board entirely. His shoulders ache from sitting like this, hunched over the table in concentration. Gavin's sitting gracefully upright, spine ramrod-straight, and Richard can already hear his chiding over the issue of "Posture, Richard!" So he chooses not to address it. Says nothing, just rubs awkwardly at his own traps and hopes Gavin doesn't notice.

Of course Gavin notices. "Are you tense?" he asks, sounding concerned. "We can call it a night."

"I'm fine," Richard protests, but then Gavin is up out of his chair, moving behind him, fingers sinking into the taut muscle there — thick fingers, strong hands, that seem to sear through the thin cotton of Richard's t-shirt. He drops his head forward, acquiescing to it, because shit, Gavin is good at this. He can't put up much of a fight. 

"You are _very_ tense," Gavin observes, digging his fingers in a little deeper. Richard takes a sharp breath, not moving, content to just feel it. "Would you prefer we do this for a bit?"

Richard exhales again, a little harder. "What were you saying about CodeRag?" he asks instead, dodging the question. He's half convinced the only reason Gavin isn't content to play out the rest of the game is because he's losing, anyway, and he won't be distracted with sex until they're finished. 

Gavin sighs. His fingers slide under the collar of Richard's white v-neck, soft skin against skin as he really digs in there. Richard leans back in his chair as Gavin's hands slide over his upper back, under his shirt, and Gavin says, "The way journalism operates. I feel — it's disgusting, isn't it? Every man for himself. Public figures may as well all be the same. They're treating me like a Kardashian — _us_. They're treating _us_ like Kardashians."

"It's really fucked," Richard agrees. "I thought it was illegal to out people."

"It's not illegal if it's true," Gavin says wryly. "Just frowned upon. And CodeRag's editorial staff doesn't seem to believe in the ethical codes generally adhered to by most in their trade."

Richard says nothing. Gavin's hands rest heavily on his shoulders for a moment before Gavin adds, "I think I'd like to finish this game tomorrow, if you don't mind."

"Yeah, okay, you're mad that I'm winning," Richard says automatically, and Gavin laughs harshly, shaking his head as he moves to leave the room.

"Come to bed when you're ready," Gavin says, "and I'll get to work on that knot in your back."

He doesn't follow him immediately; takes a shower first, with steaming hot water. The dread that has filled the pit of his stomach since the headline popped up on the godforsaken blog has in no way leveled off over the past three days. It's only a matter of time until he's dragged into this, right? How couldn't it be? Every goddamn journalist in the Santa Clara Valley has their focus laser-trained on Gavin and his personal life now. Richard's surprised they've even made it three hours. The NDAs seem to be doing their job, he supposes, but even that's cold comfort. There's got to be people who know and haven't been sworn to secrecy under threat of legal action. It can only be a matter of time.

The easiest thing to do would be to just leave. To cut his losses and tell Gavin that he doesn't want to be dragged into a billion-dollar revenge scheme against a shitty blog. The easiest thing to do, though, seems insurmountably difficult when he tries to imagine himself actually doing it. It's been a year and a half and he has somehow, for whatever reason, found himself feeling comfortable here — in this cold, unwelcoming house where he somehow still feels at home. His fingerprint unlocks the fridge now, which feels significant. And then there's the other issue. The problem of Gavin himself.

Richard clenches his jaw as he thinks about it. This isn't the time to think about feelings.

He wraps his lower half in a towel and pads through the master suite, into the bedroom. Gavin's sitting on the bed, scrolling through a tablet, looking angry and preoccupied, so Richard makes a little noise in his throat and joins him sitting. "You said something about a knot in my back?" he asks quietly, and Gavin glances up from the screen, his eyes turning from angry to hungry in an instance.

"Lie down," Gavin instructs, and Richard does, flopping onto his front and feeling only slightly awkward as Gavin straddles his ass, positioning himself above him. This time he lays into Richard with both palms, making him wince a little and then hiss in satisfaction as Gavin finds the knot between his shoulders. Gavin kneads his skin and muscle like it's his job; his wide hands splaying across Richard's back and pressing him into the mattress. It feels exceptional. It's as though his body can't decide whether to be turned on — he wants to relax, but the knowledge that it's Gavin doing it keeps him on edge enough that he compromises by canting his hips up just enough to allow for a half chub.

"You know," Gavin says, again observationally as he kneads at Richard's back, "there's nothing stopping me from destroying them, technically. It can be done, all well within the boundaries of the law."

Richard sighs. "If you want," he says. "You had a pretty hard time destroying me, though."

He feels, rather than hears, the huff of Gavin's breath against his back as he laughs. Then there are lips on the back of his neck, pressing soft kisses all the way down his spine — shit, now he's definitely turned on. Richard whines a little, arching his back as he starts to stiffen, and Gavin yanks the towel away from where it's still draped around his waist.

"I don't know how much I really wanted destroy you, Richard," Gavin says teasingly, in between laying kisses on the vertebrae of his lower back. Richard feels two thumbs press into the dimples there, shivers at the kiss that follows, hot and wet with tongue against the base of his spine. "You always forget that I like to play with my food before I eat it."

* * *

  
When they’re finished, sweaty and exhausted and curled up against each other, Richard takes a deep breath. He has to say it. He can’t hold out on this any longer — the nerves and guilt will destroy him if he does. “Gavin,” he says quietly, and Gavin hums in vague interest, lying on his back with his arms folded neatly behind his head, atop the pillow.

“I was telling the truth when I said that I had nothing to do with you being — the whole thing,” Richard says quickly. “Swear. That had nothing to do with me. But you asked before whether anyone else knew about us —”

Gavin sits up in bed abruptly, and the look on his face is pure horror. “Who else?” he asks, cold and taut. “Your friends? Bachman?”

“Erlich might have already known. I don’t know. I assume he must have, I’m always disappearing from the house and not coming home — he knew I’ve been sleeping with somebody but I never said you,” Richard says, stumbling over his words in his effort to get them all out. “Um, Jared knows. Dinesh, Gilfoyle. Bighead. They’re the main ones. I didn’t — I swear it was an accident, it only came out after the article, everyone was talking about it and I freaked out because I thought maybe one of them had —”

“Did they?” Gavin’s gone cold. Deep Space cold. Richard shakes his head.

“No. I really don’t think so. Just — I’m a little afraid now,” he confesses. “Because your whole thing is out there, and they haven’t signed anything, so there’s nothing stopping them from —”

Gavin shakes his head, places a possessive hand on Richard’s ankle. “Nobody’s going to out you. My lawyers will see to that.”

Richard frowns. He looks at Gavin, covered up to the waist by the thousand-thread-count cotton bedsheets, looking tired and worse for wear but still remarkably good to Richard’s eye. He wonders — he can’t help himself — how many other people have seen him like this. How many other men he’s allowed into this gated, passcode-locked life he leads. He tries to think, but fails to come up with, the names of any friends Gavin might have mentioned. 

“They only knew for sure since today,” Richard adds, futilely. “So none of them could’ve been behind — you know. The whole thing.” He doesn’t say ‘outing.’ He doesn’t like the way Gavin flinches away from it when he does. 

With a sigh, Gavin elbows back down onto his back, and gestures for Richard to lie closer to him. Richard, against his top-level desire, acquiesces. He senses that he should. That Gavin needs this, somehow, like he rarely needs Richard for anything. This is so fucking strange.

“My sexuality has never exactly been a matter of secrecy,” Gavin says. He’s staring at the ceiling, stroking his fingers through Richard’s hair, and Richard would be lying to himself if he tried to maintain that it didn’t feel good. “An open secret, one might say. An extremely successful 48-year-old man without even a trophy wife, or any kind of public relationship at all — I assume people might get the picture —”

“50,” Richard fills in automatically, and Gavin falters.

“What’s that?”

“You said you’re 48, but your Forbes profile and CodeRag and even fucking Wikipedia say 50,” Richard says. “What are — are you lying about your age backward?”

Gavin blinks at him, shaking his head. “Of course I meant 50,” he says. “Apologies. It’s been a long day. The point is, the press has always honored my desire not to delve into the specifics of my sexuality or my personal life. Up until only recently, anything beyond what I voluntarily disclosed about my personal dealings has been off limits.”

“Up until recently…” Richard nods. “Uh, when Bighead and all of the guys —”

“Yes. That stunt did not… anyway.” Gavin brushes it off with a brusque hand motion. “It would appear, in some regard, that the rules have changed. The press doesn’t respect me anymore. They don’t respect my leadership, which is obviously beyond the pale, considering the sharp 180 the Hooli board has even done on that regard given that I am a visionary leader—”

“Yeah, okay,” says Richard, holding up an exhausted hand. Gavin, to his surprise, catches himself mid-sentence, and he laughs.

“Anyway,” Gavin says after an odd moment of quiet. “What it seems to me is that I can no longer rely on the press to respect basic ethics in journalism. It would appear that it’s now up to me to control the narrative myself.”

Richard pauses. He’s not sure what this means, but it can’t be anything good — he frowns, but allows Gavin to hoist him closer, so that he’s practically laying on his chest, feeling the rise and fall underneath him. It’s much too intimate, almost dreadfully domestic, and he doesn’t like it at all. Except for the fact that Gavin’s body is warm, always, his body temperature perfectly calibrated with no cold hands or feet, and that he’s just solid enough to make Richard feel safe during the quiet moments, and he looks at Richard like he’s something worth looking at. His eyes don’t just dart past, but linger, and as piercing as they are, it doesn’t hurt — the wound cauterizes itself, and all he’s left with is the feeling that he’s been seen.

“So that means you’re going to start fucking with the press,” Richard says, with sudden clarity and understanding. “Controlling the narrative. You mean…”

Richard closes his eyes as he feels Gavin press a kiss to the top of his head. “I’m not going to destroy them,” Gavin says, and his voice sounds awfully soothing and reassuring, given the context. “I mean, I could. But it’s not worth it.” He pauses, and then adds, in a more strangled tone, “But if they drag you into it, I’m slitting their throats. It’s completely unethical. It’s about ethics, Richard.”


	2. #GavinGate

It turns out that Gavin’s idea of controlling the narrative and the advice of the entire Hooli PR team seem to be very different tactics. It’s a bit like comparing the battle plans of a carefully advised army packed with fantastic, world-class strategists to the bloodthirsty ramblings of some kind of Liberian warlord whose child soldiers have all either defaulted to the other side or just up and killed themselves. Richard is all nerves. Richard has never been this anxious in his life.  
  
The thing is, he figures, it’s as though he’s watching Gavin go through the stages of grief in real time. In place of the death of a human being, apparently, it’s the death of his personal privacy that he’s mourning — ironic, perhaps, given how much personal data Hooli has mined and banked over the years. Not like it matters, though. Gavin is a mess.   
  
When Richard wakes up the following morning, it’s to a sinking feeling of regret. He didn’t intend to spend the night here. Not that he intended to tell the guys, either — it’s not like Erlich will be wondering where he was, and it’s not like he’s ever been owed an answer to that, either — but still. It hits him like a sucker punch to the gut, the fact that when he walk-of-shame slumps into the incubator in two hours, it will be not to an air of mystique surrounding his private life (because, to tell the truth, he’s always kind of wanted one of those, and even encouraged it by never bothering to come up with a convincing lie about his whereabouts when he’s with Gavin), but to the odious, room-wide understanding that… he was with Gavin. That he and Gavin Belson are a Thing.  
  
It hasn’t hit him, until now, the level of humiliation that he should be feeling. It comes over him in waves like nausea, and he groans, falling back down to the bedsheets in defeat. No. Nope. He really did it. He really told everyone he works with, his only real friends and coworkers alike, that for the past year and a half, he’s been fucking Gavin Belson.   
  
He groans again, and rolls onto his front, letting the pillow stifle the groaning.  
  
“Richard?” Gavin’s voice echoes on the hardwood floors of the bedroom as he comes in, and Richard looks to the side. He’s sweaty with early-morning run or yoga sweat — Richard has never learned to tell the difference between the two, although he thinks Gavin goes a little bit redder in the face when he’s been running — and strips off his shirt as Richard watches.   
  
And, well, shit. That’s the other upsetting thing. That he can’t feel shame about it, because Gavin, for whatever goddamn reason, does this to him. Turns him on in some kind of weird caveman-brain way that makes him feel completely out of control of his own hormonal faculties. Nothing about this attraction is logical. There’s nothing in his past or his psychology that would suggest a logical predisposition to eccentric billionaires almost twice his age. And yet! Watching Gavin strip off his sweaty running clothes and toss them toward the bamboo hamper is turning him on in a way that defies all explanation.  
  
“Ugh,” Richard says, from the side of his mouth into the pillow, and then, “I’m just. You know. Tired.”  
  
“Right,” says Gavin. “It’s seven. You should get up. I have overnight oats waiting for you in the fridge.”  
  
Richard starts to push himself up to a sitting position, then pauses, bemused. “Wait,” he says. “Why would — you made me overnight oats?”  
  
With a shrug, Gavin heads toward the bathroom. “I couldn’t sleep last night,” he says through the open doorway. “And I had blueberries that would go to waste otherwise. My fruit guy always forgets I don’t like the texture.”  
  
Richard yawns, shaking his head, and follows the sound of the running shower. He brushes his teeth as the bathroom fills with steam, then slips through the trackless glass door and joins Gavin under the waterfall spray, managing somehow to bang both his knee and his elbow doing it. (Stupid move, and unnecessary — he can’t do anything weird in the shower, normally his one refuge for weirdness, when he’s there with another person — but they’ve both taken to it lately, and Richard admits, he kind of enjoys it at the best of times.) But Gavin seems distant even now, scrubbing shampoo through his hair and soaping himself down without even touching Richard.   
  
He’s weird and silent all through breakfast, while Richard slogs through his bowl of steel-cut oats with yogurt and blueberries, and it’s only when he checks Twitter that it clicks as to why. “Fuck,” he mutters as he glances at the list of trending topics. Number one: #GavinGate.   
  
Gavin shoots him a look. “Not to be short, Richard,” he says, shortly, “but I’m afraid I’ve got a long day of meetings ahead of me. You can let yourself out, I assume.”  
  
Richard blinks. “I, uh, yeah,” he stammers. “Do you want to —” He doesn’t know what he’s about to say. _Grab dinner tonight_ seems too formal. _Want me to come over to fuck the aggression out tonigh_ t is way too on the nose, if honest. He splits the difference with a quavery hand gesture and an aborted-little half shrug, and he prays Gavin gets the gist of it.  
  
“Actually, tonight isn’t good for me,” Gavin says. “I’m flying to Los Angeles for a lunch meeting with a potential buy-in opportunity, and then meeting with private investigators to feel out my options for litigation.”  
  
Richard flinches. “You’re really going to… yikes.”  
  
And Gavin shrugs in response. “I’m only doing what’s necessary. Look, we’ve got a three-day weekend coming up. Would you like to skip town early? Make it a four-day?”  
  
“I — uh.” Again, another proposal he isn’t prepared for. He thinks over the options. Four-day weekend, not so good for international travel, which leaves them limited to the continent. “Where?”  
  
“I thought we’d go to my place in Jackson Hole. Hike a bit. Recalibrate.” Gavin waves a vague hand through the air before buttoning his shirt. “Let me know.”  
  
“Yeah, no, definitely,” Richard says too quickly. “Hey, look. If you need anything… call, okay? I’m—”  
  
“You know what just really fucking gets to me?” Gavin interrupts, shoving button after button through their holes with renewed fury. “It’s not just that CodeRag would publish this story after all the goddamn grace I’ve shown them, when I chose to acquire their asses rather than put them out of business in the first place. I’ve never gone after them for posting critical pieces before, even pieces you could very much consider hit pieces—” ( _Depends on your definition of ‘go after them,’_ Richard thinks, but doesn’t say.) “—but what really makes this one just beyond the pale is that they didn’t even reach out for a quote. I’ve spoken to C.J. before. We’re not on unfriendly terms. We’ve even collaborated in the past. The fact that this so-called ‘media outlet’—” angry air quotes “—has so little faith in its own journalistic integrity that it has to hide behind ambushes and surprise hit pieces speaks to the fact that they knew they were in the wrong. In fact, I doubt I even have to say anything else. The circumstances all speak for themselves.”  
  
“Ah,” says Richard.  
  
“But I do have one other thing to say. I think what's truly magnificent here is the fact that not only did they have the cowardice not to call me for permission to publish, but also, they didn't even ask for so much as a quote, or to fact-check. As though they didn't even think for one moment that they might be wrong! For all they know, I'm not even gay, and they've just published a piece full of bald-faced lies!"

Richard spoons the last of his oatmeal into his mouth and pushes the bowl away with aggravated confusion. "You are gay, though," he says. "They weren't wrong. Didn't you say it yourself last night, that it was basically an open secret anyway? Isn't it better to have it out in the open?"

Gavin shakes his head, fixing him with a cool stare. _Fuck_ , Richard thinks, out of everything he could've said, he's just said completely the wrong thing. "Richard..." And Gavin looks and sounds disappointed. He drums his fingers on the kitchen island for a moment before adding, "Why aren't you out?"

"What? I'm not — this has nothing to do with me," Richard splutters. 

"Because you understand the nature of this industry." Gavin answers his own question smugly, and Richard feels his nostrils flare as he holds back a sigh of annoyance. "You understand that in these corridors of power, something that would be so innocuous at any other level of business can, in fact, be toxic. These people prefer you keep your private life private. Don't parade it about, don't shove it in anyone's face, et cetera. Retrograde, certainly, but I've never been bothered by the reality of it. Interestingly enough, being discreet about one's private life and remaining in a glass closet is, in these times, easier done than said."

"It's different for you," Richard argues. "You're, you know, you. A fucking billionaire. CEO of one of the most ubiquitous companies in the world. I work in a house with five other dudes who swing back and forth between being kind of homophobic and also kind of super gay depending on the time of day."

"And how did they react when you told them about us?"

Richard heaves a sigh. He thinks about the look on Jared's face, the way Gilfoyle had laughed with something that sounded almost like glee. Erlich — he wasn't even in the room, but he's bound to have heard by now, given the three voicemails he left overnight, which Richard is still studiously avoiding. "It wasn't, like, a fucking parade. I don't know, I was angry, I thought one of them had made the article happen, it's a whole thing."

Gavin sighs and shakes his head. "Go to work. I'll call you if I hear anything. Richard?"

"Hm?" He looks up from where he's buttoning his own day-old shirt to find Gavin looking at him with some measure of what could nearly be construed as tenderness, in the right light.

Gavin sighs, and runs both hands over his face, pressing the heels of his palms into his eye sockets and exhaling much too loudly. "Just... don't be distressed about this," he says. An awfully fucking lofty command, given that all he's done for the past eighteen hours is act distressed about it himself, but whatever. 

Richard buttons the last couple buttons and tries in vain to brush out a few wrinkles. "Sure," he says. It comes out sounding fake and much too upbeat. "Whatever. Normal day."

Gavin doesn't kiss him goodbye. Richard pretends he wasn't expecting it.

 

* * *

 

Despite his best efforts, Richard pulls into the incubator's driveway five minutes too late to beat the other guys. He takes the back door in, and manages to sneak into his room unnoticed to throw on a different shirt and hoodie, but the gesture makes no difference. As soon as he steps out into the living room, Erlich is upon him.

"Good morning, Richard," he says, swirling his cold brew in one hand with a leonine air of superiority. "Did you have a refreshing night's sleep upon the supple bosom of Satan?"

Richard holds out both hands, placating. An empty gesture. "Look. I know I should have told you before."

"Damn right you should've told me!" Erlich takes an aggressive sip through the straw, as if to punctuate, and then rages on for the audience. "I own a small percentage of Grindr, for fuck's sake! If you wanted to go forth and bang dudes, by all means, I could have helped line up a few better options than, oh, I don't know, the man who has made it his life's mission to destroy your livelihood and antagonize me personally."

"Erlich, Gavin barely knows who you are," Richard groans. "It's not — this has nothing to do with any of you. I promise."

"I just have to ask: since when?"

Richard sighs. Calculates the risk inherent in telling the truth and decides, upon review, to go with it. "You know the arbitration?"

"Upon whence you returned home to find the incubator in flames and the future of your company secure? Indeed I do, Richard. So while we were working to save your ass, you were out getting it pounded—"

"Yeah, no, that's not actually what happened," says Richard testily. "Fuck. Just listen, okay?" He looks at the room, at Jared and Dinesh and Gilfoyle and Bighead all sitting there in stunned silence, watching Erlich just have at him. Their passivity, and not Erlich's fervor, is what puts him over the edge, fills him with immense irritation. "At the arbitration, Gavin kind of — he came on to me in a way I wasn't really expecting. He made a buyout offer, which I refused, and then he just kind of... said okay. And he gave me his card and told me to call him if I was interested in the other thing he was putting down. And I just kind of..." He makes a valiant attempt at an explicatory gesture. "Did."

"So this has been going on this whole time," Erlich says, sounding for the first time as though he may actually be a bit stunned. "Through the whole last year, you've been fucking him? The bullshit with Jack Barker? The Maleant Systems deal? The part where he tried to buy your ass for a million dollars?"

Richard groans. "Technically. Yeah."

"Jesus fuck, Richard," Gilfoyle pipes up from the peanut gallery. "I'm pretty sure that somewhere along those lines, you did something illegal.”

Richard stifles the groan building inside him and instead flounces to his chair, dropping down into it heavily and booting up his computer with more theatrical force than could really be deemed necessary. He doesn’t answer. He’s all too aware of the four sets of eyes trained on him around the room as he waits for his monitor to light up, and as his desktop flickers into view, he hears Jared pipe up, “Have you eaten? Would you like a yogurt?”

“Don’t offer him my yogurts,” Erlich chuffs.

“I already ate,” snaps Richard. “Gavin made me overnight oats. With blueberries. Because he fucking hates blueberries and his fruit guy gave him a whole thing of blueberries that he wouldn’t be eating otherwise. Okay? That’s the extent of our collusion, or whatever the fuck you’re concerned about. We don’t talk about work, we have an all’s-fair policy as far as business goes, we just — we fuck, and I stay over at his place, and he makes me breakfast because he’s concerned about my blood sugar levels. There. That’s all you need to know about my torrid affair with Gavin fucking Belson.” He slams both palms down, a little too hard, on the tabletop, and then face-plants onto his keyboard, breathing in and out much too heavily.

Nobody says anything for a while.  
  


* * *

  
By lunchtime, no one bothers him. Not for lack of trying — Erlich makes a great show of moving about the room and avoiding Richard as much as he can, while Gilfoyle reads Hooli News headlines about Gavin aloud in the otherwise silent room — but Richard buries himself in his work, with noise-canceling headphones clamped solidly over his ears, and he ignores them all. He notices that Jared seems to be taking the same approach: he's in and out of the house, phone call after phone call, and he doesn't make eye contact with Richard at all during that time.

When he does speak, though, his voice is soft and pleasant as ever. "Richard, I'm afraid I forgot to bring a packed lunch with me today. Would you like me to pick you up anything at Subway?"

"What? Uh, no," Richard says, glancing up from his monitor, distracted. "Thanks —"

"Not unless they have a new Billionaire's Foot Long menu," Dinesh cracks.

Gilfoyle snickers. "More like a Billionaire's Six Inch," he says, and they both laugh, and exchange a high-five as Jared gives them both a reproachful look.

Richard groans again. He's not even hungry. The fucking overnight oats are doing their job, and he's going to be full until, like, three o'clock. Fuck Gavin. Fuck his weird, totally bizarre taste in literally everything and fuck him for imposing it on Richard like he cares, or whatever.

He opens his email again, and clicks on the Medium Daily Digest as it bounces into his inbox. The first headline in the email blast: "Does Gavin Belson Deserve His Privacy After Violating Ours?"

It's unsavory and badly written, classic clickbait, the scourge of the Internet, but Richard clicks on it anyway. The piece, by a Jesse Aperna, loads, and against his better judgment, he reads it.

_It’s a fair assumption that you've all read CJ Cantwell's piece at CodeRag by now, alleging that one Mr. Gavin Belson, founder and CIO of Hooli, ubiquitous figure among the technorati, is gay. Who knew? No, really, who would've thunk that the gel-coiffed man who travels everywhere with a male 'spiritual adviser' of dubious accreditation and once made_ **_this face_ ** _upon meeting Jessica Lange might possibly be gay? Next you're going to tell me that Peter Gregory is dead!_

_But as news of #GavinGate swept Twitter yesterday, there was pushback from certain corners. Cantwell's article, they argued, was an invasion of privacy. Never mind that it only asserted things many of us knew to be true (other media outlets, such as the New York Post and the Wall Street Journal, have made coded mention of Belson's entanglements with the rougher sex — see their coverage in 2010, when he attended the Museum of Natural History Gala with investment banker Sheffield Harrison, or this old Page Six mention of Belson spotted on a date with Anderson Cooper). No, they argued, Belson's sexuality is not a matter of public interest; it doesn't pertain to the common good. Outing a man who is not a politician has little impact on the public discourse at large, but impacts his life massively. Belson, in this regard, deserves to simply be left alone._

_I disagree. You know why? Wikileaks._

_Remember five years ago, when we learned that Hooli collaborated with the NSA to collect its users data, they themselves private citizens? Remember when Gavin Belson gave a press conference on Bloomberg, essentially begging for our forgiveness and assuring Hooli users that their private data would thenceforth remain private? Remember how Hooli stock nose-dived and Belson went on a press tour, hitting every stop on the circuit — cable news, major magazines, even Jimmy Fallon — to beg forgiveness?_

_I certainly do. Maybe the rest of Twitter has forgotten, but let's be honest: if you think Belson cares at all about data security and the right to privacy for anyone but himself, you're not just wrongheaded, you're so wrongheaded you might as well be Hooli XYZ. Belson got exactly what's been coming to him since 2011. I just hope there's more to come.  
_

Stomach churning and mind in disarray, Richard scans the comments: an awful 2509 of them, most of them supportive. He doesn't need these ideas getting a foothold in his brain — not today, for Christ's sake. He clicks away and folds his arms, then sits back and announces, "I'm going out for lunch. If anyone needs me."

The drive to Whole Foods isn't too bad, even with lunchtime traffic, but as he parks and walks inside, he's not thinking about food. He roams the aisles instead, scanning over organic buckwheat pasta and Barbara's Puffins cereal. He's still not hungry; his only desire is to be somewhere outside the incubator.

In the dairy section, he looks at kefir, and instinctually grabs for a bottle of the kind Gavin likes for its low sugar content. The thing getting to him, the thing sticking in his craw, is that this isn't sustainable. It may have been when they started, a year and a half, closer to two years ago, but everything has shifted. They're closer than they ever meant to be. More intertwined. Their lives, their privacy, the shared space in the Venn diagram between them extends further than hate sex and hurried, angry meetings in ostensibly private places.

_I need to control the narrative_ , Gavin said. So what the fuck does that even mean? Richard picks up an avocado, then puts it back. Fucking Gavin and his weird control issues. He can't control this. It's already spinning out, becoming much wider than either of them expected. 

The obvious occurs to him in a horrified flash of clarity in the checkout line, and Richard nearly drops his kefir. 

Gavin doesn't have any other choice, does he? It's the only logical next step: disclose everything. He can't sue the entire internet, or scrub it, for that matter. Short of going after Jack Dorsey himself and deleting every tweet ever tweeted, there's one one real way to correct the public perception. And that means Richard will inevitably be dragged into it himself.

But who cares? The only five people he personally cares enough to hide it from already know, and the longer he keeps it from Laurie and the rest of the board — provided, of course, that Erlich hasn't already spilled everything — the worse that intractable quagmire will become. He's deep enough in the quicksand pit as it is. Might as well, he thinks, throw a Hail Mary and put it all out there themselves.

"Call Gavin Belson," he mutters into his phone as quietly as he can mutter, and as he trudges to the next available cashier, Gavin picks up on the second ring.

"Yes?"

"I know what you need to do," Richard blurts out, as he sets his kefir and a $17 sushi roll down on the counter. The cashier gives him a thinly-veiled semblance of a dirty look, and Richard approximates a shrug of apology in response: _Sorry, urgent business._

Gavin sighs heavily on the other end, sounding almost hilariously put-upon, as if it were some sort of undue hardship to spend ten minutes talking to his goddamn b—the person he’s sleeping with. "Can it wait?"

"Are you about to take off? I thought you would've made it to LA by now."

"No, no, I'm afraid I've had to postpone that meeting by a week. Sudden officewide bout of food poisoning at their place," Gavin says bitterly. "Or, perhaps, sudden cold feet on their end given the circumstances. I'm at the Hooli campus."

"Ah. Right." Richard swipes his debit card and waves off the offer of a bag, tucking his lunch under his arm and making a beeline for the exit. "Yeah, uh, I just had an idea about that, actually."

"We're doing our best to stem the blood flow here today," Gavin says. "I called a public relations all-hands after receiving the deferral call this morning. Meet me at my office in 30, I'll make time to chat."

"Gavin, I have to work," Richard says, indignant.

"Right. The situation there? Stable?"

"As far as I know. Look, can I just come over tonight? There's something I think we need to talk about."

"Fine. Nine o'clock," says Gavin, and Richard swallows and nods, before realizing that Gavin can't see him.

"Nine is fine. I... oh. You should just stay off the internet today," Richard says, as gently as he can manage. "Lots of hot takes. All of them kind of suck."

He hears a long exhale, hot breath directed right into the phone, and then Gavin adds, "That's generous."

"Anyway. Nine. I'll, uh, see you." He thinks about adding something else, maybe something more affectionate, but decided against it. Gavin's already hung up.

He looks at the sushi in his lap. He neglected to pick up chopsticks from the plastic silverware section of the store. Sitting in his car, there in the hot parking lot, he shovels the Thai crunch roll down his throat using his fingers and pounds kefir to follow it, tasting nothing, ignoring the queasy feeling it sparks in his gut.

 

* * *

  
When he gets to Gavin’s house that night, he’s already exhausted. For the first time in a while, he practices a little forethought, packs a change of clothes so that his walk of shame might not be too obvious. Isn’t it about time he establish a drawer of his own things at Gavin’s, though? Wouldn’t it make more sense to simply keep them there? He’s already got his own toothbrush, a few sets of earbuds he’s lost and left there over the months, a whole shelf of the stuff he likes in the fridge. It shouldn’t be a leap to establish that yes, he does have a place there.

Gavin’s waiting for him in the living room when he arrives, and Richard goes straight to him, lies down on the floor near where he’s seated on the couch. Gavin peers down at him curiously. Richard doesn’t move.  
  
“How was your meeting with the private eyes?” Richard asks, in lieu of a hello or anything more — tender? Should he start being tender? Why is this all, now, just hitting him?  
  
Gavin shrugs. “They don’t know anything yet. CodeRag won’t cooperate. Apparently this is a ‘misuse of power to bully the press’ and ‘a violation of first amendment rights,’ which I believe is code for ‘nobody even did any legwork and so there’s nothing to protect.’”  
  
“Their whole editorial team is operating in stealth mode because they’ve got nothing else,” Richard laughs bitterly. “Maybe Elizabeth Holmes could swing a second act as a blogger.”  
  
Gavin humors him with a chuckle, but Richard can see that he’s elsewhere. He shakes his head, cracks his knuckles. “What were you so adamant about needing to tell me this afternoon?” he asks, and Richard groans. The idea of sitting up seems foreign and as though it would require far, far more energy than he has to expend. Sitting up to have this conversation might as well mean running a half marathon. It’s beyond his meager abilities. He’s only a man, after all.  
  
The thrum of anxiety, the constant refrigerator-hum of it that has been buzzing in his body all day, kicks up to a crescendo. The thing is, most of the time, Richard doesn’t even notice it. It’s just the ambient noise in his head, by this point. The sound and steam of the engines that keep his body moving. It’s only times like now, when the engines rev and chug like they’re showing off, that he even really takes note of it.  
  
Ignoring the little knot of nausea in his gut, he shrugs. "I just had a thought earlier today," he begins, but before he's even got the next words halfway planned out in his mind, Gavin's phone rings.

"Richard, I need to take this, give me a moment." His voice sounds genuinely apologetic — which is a new feature, Richard's rarely heard him sound so sheepish before — and so he can't really argue with it. As if he could at all, really, but it's particularly not worthwhile now. Instead, Richard rests his head on the carpet and stares up at the ceiling, only half listening to the conversation taking place in the next room.

When Gavin comes back in, he looks even more tired than before, rolling up the sleeves of his shirt and collapsing on the couch with a defeated look. "That was Amanda from PR," he says, as if that should mean something to Richard. And then: "Richard, I don't know how to put this. We spent all day going over this, and we're basically looking at one logical option."

"Oh," says Richard, and then, from the grim look on Gavin's face, tenses up, the humming of the anxiety engines roaring into first gear with a tremendous growl at the pit of his stomach. 

"We need to come clean to the press and the public about our relationship," Gavin says grimly, and Richard can't help himself. He feels, rather than hears, a clean shout of laughter rip through his body, and finally sits up.

Gavin's watching him with a critical scowl, an odd look of discerning confusion, as Richard scoots closer to him, wrapping his arms around his knees and leaning back against the front of the couch. "This is... funny to you?"

"That's what I was trying to talk to you about earlier today," Richard admits. "But then you called me over here acting all grim and my brain just — ran with it."

"Ah." Gavin nods. Then reaches down and strokes the top of Richard's head once, softly, and takes his hand away, leaving him with the odd sensation that he's just been pet. "So I — you're not opposed to it. That was my worry."

Richard swallows. The engines creak and crank a little louder inside him, letting out little hisses of steam with each full revolution. "I guess not?" He shakes his head. "Wait, though. Laurie Bream and everyone at Raviga. The board. Is this going to be bad for me?"

Gavin shrugs. "In my expert opinion, I doubt it. If anything, it might give you a vote of confidence in their eyes. After all that hand-wringing and the multiple attempts to replace you as CEO, doesn't it make sense for them to know that you're actively learning from the best?"

Waving that off, Richard narrows his eyes. "The Maleant deal, though. Jack and the Box. And they're going to assume you got access to the algorithm because I was, I don't know, careless or something —"

"And I have rooms full of engineers who are willing to testify to the contrary," Gavin says. "Listen. Do you realize what this could do for your company's profile? For your profile as a CEO? Your palpable awkwardness in front of cameras and large groups of people aside, this could be _so good_ for you."

"So it's just a publicity thing," Richard says. Dejected, he shakes his head. "I mean, I knew that, but —"

"It's not 'just' a publicity thing," Gavin counters patiently. "But we are, for better or worse, public figures. I'm sure you understand how little respect the public has for the privacy of people like us. If we don't put it out there with the help of seasoned public relations professionals, someone else will beat us to it, and I assure you that they won't be half as concerned with making us look good."

"So in terms of the board, and Laurie, and Pied Piper..." Richard swallows around a bone-dry lump in his throat. "We have to do it."

Gavin nods. "We'll announce just before the holiday weekend. It'll get buried. This will all turn out fine if we exercise control."

With that, Gavin stands, and holds out a hand to hoist Richard off the floor. Richard lets him, and follows him hesitantly through the cavernous house, leaving a few solid feet between them, giving Gavin his space while preserving his own. Gavin doesn't walk so much as he prowls, stalking down the halls with an irritation palpable even to Richard, but as they near the master suite, he turns around, and Richard sees the Adam's apple bob in his throat as he swallows before speaking.

"I don't know how much we can really —" He waves a hand through the air. "I'm a bit distracted, Richard."

"I can leave," Richard says too quickly, but Gavin shakes his head emphatically.

"No, don't do that," he says. He reaches out hesitantly, strokes Richard's arm through the sleeve of his hoodie. His grip is softer, more tentative than usual, and it makes Richard feel — different. He realizes, for the first time, perhaps, that he's never seen Gavin this emotionally vulnerable. It's weird, like seeing a turtle without its shell. He's pretty sure he doesn't like it, but he's also pretty sure he doesn't get a choice in the matter.

"Just stay here, you're already here and there's no use going home this late," he adds, and Richard swallows and nods.


	3. #GavinGhazi (Or, The Hendricks Pamphlet: Have You Read This?!)

The rest of the week goes by quickly, without much incident. He leaves Gavin's early the next morning, and doesn't bother to play out their parody of intimacy — and Gavin, for his part, seems fine with that. "I'll see you Friday," he says, and kisses Richard brusquely on the lips. Still more than he was expecting, truthfully — he'll take it.

Work, specifically, flies by. With the video chat platform's launch date looming on the horizon, none of them have much time to pick fights or rib each other over trivial things. Only Jared, when Richard lets drop on Thursday his out-of-town plans for the four day weekend, bats an eye.

"Richard," he says quietly, "I'm not certain that's advisable, so close to the deadline —"

"I know," Richard mutters apologetically, low enough that only Jared can hear him. "I'm not pumped about it, but Gavin's not in a great place, okay? I feel like I kind of have to do this."

Jared purses his lips for a split second, and looks like he's holding back some decidedly ungentlemanly, un-Jared-ly retort. Instead, all he eventually says is, "Do you think, if the roles were reversed, that Gavin would do the same for you?"

The question catches him off-guard, right between his second and third ribs. He's not sure how to answer it. Because on the one hand, he's almost certain that Gavin would. Gavin cares about him way more than he cares about Gavin. That's the whole reason why they've even lasted this long — the weird level of investment on Gavin's end, versus the comparatively low level of effort the whole thing requires of Richard himself. Gavin is always trying to convince him to get massages and eat better and try, just try guided meditation this one goddamn time. The amount of concern Gavin seems to have for him is flattering on the best days, and a little overbearing on the worst — definitely excessive for someone he spent months, if not years, litigating against in the best-case hopes of professional destruction.

So yes, he's pretty certain that if their roles were reversed, Gavin would be the one coaxing him into a salubrious jaunt out to one of his several vacation homes — but he can't be sure, and the restorative properties of the Wyoming terrain aside, he doesn't want to think too hard about it. Instead, he says, "I'll be on email the whole time. I'll basically just be working remotely. If anything comes up, just get in contact, I'm right there."

Jared doesn't look convinced, but he doesn't dispute the point, either; he just nods and tells Richard, "Noted. Have a good trip."

"Will do," Richard says pointedly, a little more so than necessary, and goes back to his lunch, which is cereal, but healthy cereal, at least.

 

* * *

 

He packs haphazardly on Thursday night, and takes off for Gavin's early on Friday morning, rather than meeting him at the airstrip directly. He's glad he does. Gavin waves him inside, kisses him hot and direct on the mouth, and grants him a rare, genuine smile. "I've missed you," he says. "Everything's set. The PR team is going to release the writeup about us this afternoon at 2, right as the East Coast press has started to close up shop, which gives the West Coast maybe three hours to discuss before they’re all off on their own long weekends. And we—” Here he kisses Richard again, deeper and harder than feels appropriate for seven in the morning. “—will be in Jackson Hole, completely unplugged and divorced from the whole subject. When we come back on Tuesday, it’ll be as though the news release never happened.”  
  
Richard pulls away, furrowing his brow in confusion. “When you say completely unplugged, you mean—”  
  
“Oh, there’s wifi, of course,” Gavin says. “But I was hoping we could, ah — make up for the past few days, if you will.” His eyes flit down to Richard’s wrists, and then to his crotch, never less subtle if he tried. “So perhaps not completely unplugged. So to speak.”  
  
Richard doesn’t hate the idea. He’ll say that much. Fine. Long-weekend fuckfest in Jackson Hole, safely tucked away from whatever furor Hooli's PR announcement might provoke? Richard barely has to think twice about it, albeit before adding, "I did say I'd be on email, though, so..."

Gavin grins, conspiratorial and cool. "You can be. If you have any time left over," he mutters. His hand slides into the back pocket of Richard's chinos, squeezing his ass, and it's to Richard's credit that he doesn't yelp or jump away, like he did the first few times that happened. 

He looks at Gavin, who appears smug and secure, confident and more than a little turned on. The idea of somehow negating that doesn't seem appealing. 

The drive to the airstrip takes minutes, and Gavin doesn't seem stressed; he conferences in Denpok for a quick session in the Tesla. "This is the right path, right? Putting it all out there on our own? There's no way this is going to fuck things up for me."

"I think you have made the ideal choice given your situation," comes Denpok's voice over the speakerphone, and Richard rolls his eyes. 

"And this will... nobody's going to make fun of me for this, right? Call me an opportunist? And Richard?"

"You will be fine," says Denpok, that fake-mystic tone in his voice setting Richard's teeth on edge. "Richard, we must see. The universe has a plan for all..."

Gavin nods thoughtfully as he pulls into the parking lot. "Thanks," he says. "I'll get back to you later today."

By the time they land in Jackson, it's only 10 am California time, but Richard's phone starts buzzing insistently the moment he has reception. He glances at the screen: a call from Jared. Jared, normally the picture of calm control, would never call him on the first day of a vacation for anything less than an emergency.

Richard cringes apologetically at Gavin, then swipes the screen.

"Hey," he says hesitantly. "What's wrong?"

"Ah, Richard, I'm... I'm glad I caught you." 

Jared's voice is a little weak on the other end, and Richard's mind immediately jumps to another worst-case scenario, end-days shit. Company in tatters. Proprietary materials stolen and released to the web. Someone, somehow, dead in an 1800s-style duel. They pile up one at a time until Richard blinks rapidly and clears his throat. "What's going on?"

"I'm sure you just landed, and we all just saw it, but I thought I should be the one to tell you —" Jared hesitates here, again, and Richard's patience, by now, has worn thin.

"Tell me what? What the fuck is going on?"

"Check CodeRag," Jared says quietly. "I'm sorry, Richard."

His heart now hammering in his throat, Richard ends the call abruptly and opens the web browser on his phone as he trips after Gavin, down the stair-car and off the tarmac. Gavin glances back at him, the strap of his bag swinging jauntily from his shoulder, a strange, fearful coldness returning to his expression — the familiar coldness that had been absent all morning, replaced by upbeat affection all through the plane ride.

"Richard," he says, and his voice is grave. "Has something happened?"

Richard doesn't answer. He loads CodeRag immediately, and scrolls. He doesn't have to scroll far.

 

* * *

 

 **_This is the Secret CEO Boyfriend Gavin Belson's Been Hiding  
_ ** _By C.J. Cantwell  
Filed to: Gavin Belson, Hooli, Richard Hendricks, Pied Piper, Farewells_

_Well, folks, we all knew this was coming. This will be my last post here at CodeRag, and I thought I'd leave you all with a bang._

_Or, more specifically, who Gavin Belson is banging._

_We thought, or rather we hoped, that the embattled Hooli CIO would be able to pivot from the recent public revelations about his sexuality as quickly as he's managed to pivot from his recent various failed Hooli ventures of late. Unfortunately, unlike Hooli XYZ, nucleus, and Endframe, my last piece on Belson's intense paranoia surrounding the glass closet in which he's spent the past 20 years did not seem to escape his memory so quickly. Which is a shame. If Hooli is the bastion of tolerance that it claims, and if Belson is the forward-thinking progressive he insists he is, it doesn't quite make sense that he would have kept his personal life a secret from journalists and his closest colleagues for so long. In fact, in the past week, my colleagues and I have received a series of messages from Hooli's top brass and Belson himself, relaying the destruction that would rain down upon us if the original post were not scrubbed from the internet and a retraction not issued immediately._

_But that's not how journalism works, Mr. Belson. That's not how responsible journalists behave. And while Hooli may have acquired a controlling share in CodeRag last year, you don't have the authority to control what does and doesn't get published here._

_So with that in mind, I, along with the rest of the managing and editorial staff here at CodeRag, do herein tender our resignation. A press outlet beholden to the corporate interests of an industry on which it serves to report cannot and will not be taken seriously by its peers, and we cannot, in good faith, continue to work for you._

_But since we're already out the door — we thought we'd share one last scoop with our readership, to reaffirm our commitment to journalistic integrity._

_We can tell you with confidence that the identity of this secret boyfriend Gavin Belson is so intent upon hiding is none other than Richard Hendricks, a 2014 TechCrunch Disrupt winner and CEO of the data-compression startup Pied Piper._

_You might remember that Hendricks, 28, was the subject of an IP lawsuit filed by Gavin Belson himself, only two years ago. Ownership of his "middle-out" compression algorithm, hailed as revolutionary by the late VC Peter Gregory (another one of Belson's former conquests — more on that later), was challenged by Belson, whose legal team alleged that it had been developed on Hooli company time and technology and thus remained the intellectual property of Hooli itself._

_Hendricks won the lawsuit on a technicality, but also, evidently, won Belson's heart. Sources confirm that Belson and Hendricks have been seeing each other for more than a year and a half, and have taken frequent private trips to Belson's properties scattered around the continent. In fact, according to one source, they're privately on a romantic four-day getaway to Belson's cozy $5.5 million Jackson Hole lodge. All the better to escape the prying eyes of the Valley under present circumstances, right? That’s to say nothing of the crumbling two-year deal between Hooli and Maleant Data Systems — sources tell us the Hooli board is reconsidering the terms of the contract, as well as Belson’s leadership role at the company, in light of Belson’s recent press fumbles. Seems like a very convenient time for the pair to skip town…_

_Another source tells us that Belson's litigatory obsession with Hendricks began after Peter Gregory's sudden death in 2014. Which makes sense, given Belson's intense relationship with Gregory — long rumored to have once been romantic in nature, another rumor we can now personally confirm as fact. Belson's legendary falling out with Gregory is the topic of more than one unauthorized biography, and reportedly the subject of Aaron Sorkin's next screenplay. It'll be interesting to see whether Sorkin changes course in the light of these new revelations._

_In any case, these are the facts, thusly revised: Gavin Belson is gay, and, like us, may not be long for the green pastures of Hooli, if the company’s shareholders have anything to say about it. His boyfriend is Richard Hendricks, a startup CEO who is more than 20 years his junior, and a man whose intellectual property Belson once conspired to steal outright after losing in a court battle. Hendricks' company was originally funded by Peter Gregory, who had a longtime romantic relationship with Belson in the 1980s and '90s, up until their now-infamous fracturing that spun Hooli into the ubiquitous corporate overlord it is now. Anything else?_

_Oh. And come next Monday, you can find us at our new home, ValleyHound.com._

_C.J._

 

* * *

  
  
Somehow, Richard expected an explosion. A volcano of anger. An earthquake. The Big One, a display of rage with the geological force to destroy the entire Bay Area from deep underground. 

He didn't expect Gavin's fault lines to slip so silently. He didn't expect the freezing cold silence that chills the air between them on the drive to the lodge.

Gavin doesn't use a driver. He doesn't trust them, Richard learned early on; the only people he trusts are himself, and Denpok, and now, ostensibly, Richard. Or at least, that's the feeling he gets. He hasn't bothered to, like, ask or anything. But the lack of the driver constitutes the more pressing issue, because it's fucking silent in the Tesla they take from the airstrip, identical to the one they left behind in California, and he would give anything for even the ingratiating familiarity of an Uber driver desperate for a good rating. He thinks he'd prefer screaming, ranting, to be an audience for a barrage of threats. 

But Gavin is silent, and he drives. He offers nothing but quiet, terse, one-word responses to Richard's intermittent queries, and when they pull into the garage at the lodge, he turns to Richard with a newfound gravity.

"Are you all right?" he asks, and Richard takes a stunned breath.

 _Is_ he all right? Richard can't tell. He's not feeling much of anything. Two years, a year and a half ago, he would have been stress-puking all over the place, but for some reason he doesn't feel the instinct rising with the bile inside his abdomen. "Numb, at most," he admits quietly, and Gavin shakes his head.

"Would you like to perform a screaming ritual in the woods?"

"Don't you have a solarium for that?" Richard can't resist asking, and Gavin's face goes taut, even though it's half a joke.

"Only at the house in California. And the one off the coast of Mexico. Though that was constructed under other, rather dire circumstances. The authorities... regardless." He waves a careless hand through the air, and Richard follows it with his eyes. "Come. We'll release the negative energy."

Richard leaves his bag in the front hall, and follows Gavin out back, down a path through the woods. They walk for a few minutes — more than five, perhaps, but fewer than ten. Gavin leads him to a small clearing, the forest around them thick with pine trees, and Richard sniffs at the remarkably clear air. It's almost too brisk, making his eyes run. 

Gavin turns to him, pushing up the sleeves of his half-zip. And then, with no prologue or explanation, he screams.

It's intensely startling, so much that Richard actually leaves his feet momentarily. He jumps back and steadied himself on a tree trunk, but pulls his hand away as soon as he's got his balance. It's sticky, and covered in sap. Gavin doesn't seem to notice. Eyes closed, veins on his forehead and the side of his neck abulge, his face goes a vivid red the longer he screams, seemingly without stopping to draw breath. It's remarkable, in the moment, how long he goes on — _Maybe it's some kind of Tuvan throat singer breathing thing_ , Richard wonders, before Gavin pauses, gasps for air, and continues to scream. On and on, his knuckles going entirely white where his hands ball into fists, clenched by his ribs, hunched over and defensive in stance.

"Okay!" Richard finally cuts him off when it's gone on for some interminable amount of time. Footsteps crunch behind them, and Richard spins around. He's terrified for a moment that they've attracted the attention of, like, park rangers or something, but instead, it's only a pair of hikers in neon field jackets. Typical woodsy couple. 

Richard catches himself, and offers a friendly wave. "I, uh, he's fine," he says with a jerk of the head in Gavin's direction. Gavin, a second too late, adds an ingratiating smile.

"Beautiful day!" Gavin says, and the hikers return the pleasantries and move along. Once they're safely in the distance, he turns back to Richard and takes both his hands, his chest puffing outward in time with his deep breathing. "Your turn," he says, and Richard frowns.

"Just scream?"

Gavin nods, and Richard takes a deep breath of his own. It seems ridiculous, but Gavin's listing ship seems to have righted itself to its typical even keel, and so Richard is inclined to follow him, just a little bit, down this path of madness.

"This is fucking ridiculous," he mutters, but Gavin only looks at him expectantly, waiting, and Richard takes another breath.

His first screech is weak, wimpy even by his own standards, and Gavin folds his arms, shakes his head in disapproval. "Try that again," he says, and Richard feels his face flush at the implicit command. The familiar desire to prove himself, show Gavin exactly how fucking competent he can be, floods his veins, and it doesn't matter whether it's just over something stupid like ritualized yoga screaming. It feels like adrenaline, pumping under his skin, and he likes it.

He digs deep into the furthest recesses of his body, deep into his diaphragm and the dark places beneath it, and screams his purple-red guts out into the crisp, sap-smelling air. Stops, takes a breath, and screams again, gripping the cuffs of his sweatshirt sleeves for leverage against himself — keeps screaming, eyes closed, head thrown back against the sky, and he feels his arms flailing like a Muppet in front of him, their control now seeming out of his body's purview. Richard screams, and he screams, and when he finally coughs on his own spittle on the fifth breath he draws, Gavin brings his hands up to Richard's shoulders, gentling his arms back down to his sides. The sap on his hands makes his sweatshirt stick to his palms.

“That’s enough screaming for now,” he says, and then, “feel better?”  
  
Richard shrugs, feeling a bratty kind of urge to deny and downplay it rising in him. If he plays it right, and they both find it within them to calm down, he might be able to parlay it into some kind of cathartic, head-clearing rough sex later — but maybe not, because this kind of personal stress, he’s finding, drains Gavin’s libido as much as it makes his own spike upward. Different timetables, perhaps. Sucks.  
  
“Let’s go back in, then,” Gavin says. “I’ll show you the house.”  
  
Richard trails behind Gavin as he gives him the $25, Hearst Castle-style tour of the lodge; it’s exactly what he expected. Contemporary style architecture, with vaulted ceilings and all made out of creamy, caramel-colored pine. It occurs to Richard that he feels like he’s been here before. He says it out loud. “This place looks familiar.”  
  
“Perhaps you saw the feature in Dwell Magazine,” is Gavin’s response, and then he sweeps a hand over the kitchen counter and changes the lighting from bright to dim and romantic. “Same tech as the place in Palo Alto.”  
  
“Nice.” Richard feigns enthusiasm.  
  
“Don’t feign enthusiasm.” Gavin’s look is half exasperation and half Richard doesn’t know what. Inscrutable. It’s weird. Everything is weird. Gavin Belson’s Secret CEO Boyfriend. Fuck. A hot ribbon of anger pulses down his spine and he shoves his hands into his sweatshirt pockets.  
  
Gavin checks his Hooli watch with vague interest. “I’m going to take a short nap,” he says, instead of anything pertinent. “And call Denpok. Would you like anything? Coffee? Tea? There should be a fully-stocked fridge.”  
  
“I’m fine,” Richard lies, and then, “you don’t always have to feed me. I can —”  
  
“Richard, I know how you eat, I think we both know it’s for the better I see to it that you get your nutrients.” Gavin is already on his way out of the room, and Richard wants to argue the point, but then remembers skipping breakfast, and he reconsiders. “Wifi password is ‘Murphy.’”  
  
“Murphy?”  
  
“My middle name,” says Gavin, and then turns back with a cocked eyebrow. “You didn’t — I thought you knew.”  
  
“It’s not on Wikipedia, and we kind of skipped the basic introductions phase,” Richard says testily, and Gavin holds up both hands, a concession.  
  
“Very well,” he says. “I — you read my Wikipedia?”  
  
Richard feels his face flush and makes an incoherent little noise. “It’s the first thing that comes up when I Google you,” he says, and ignores Gavin’s pointed look at the mention of Google. “I — God, I’ll see you later.”  
  
The rest of the afternoon slips away. He refreshes Twitter listlessly, watches his replies fill up with countless links and jokes and straight-up abuse, but can’t bring himself to look away. The expected emails from Pied Piper’s HQ don’t arrive. He doesn’t look at his phone — in fact, he sets it to Do Not Disturb to somewhat stem the flow of arriving text messages from his friends and complete strangers alike.  
  
The TV in the den is massive. Which is funny, because Gavin never watches it, that he knows of — in fact, Richard doesn’t remember even seeing one at the house in Palo Alto. He turns it on anyway, flips through the channels. There’s Netflix. He clicks in through Gavin’s account, looks at what he’s recently watched: Mad Men, Cutthroat Kitchen, Studio 60 on the Sunset Strip. He finally settles on an old episode of Ancient Aliens, a show he’s never exactly chosen to watch but that always seems to be playing on the TV at Erlich’s when he’s high, and curls up on the huge, plush couch, pulling a cashmere throw over him. He ignores his phone. He tries, very sincerely, to do what Gavin is always haranguing him to do and clear his mind.  
  
It’s slow going at first. What the fuck do people do, recite a mantra? For some reason, all he can think of is the movie The Love Guru, which he saw on a terrible group date in college, because he was still going on group dates in college, like some kind of freak. That was during the period when people liked Justin Timberlake in movies. If Justin Timberlake plays Gavin in the Sorkin movie, that’s going to be so exhausting to sit through. Anyway. A mantra. He thinks about it for a moment, and settles on Lasko Elite Collection, which is printed on the box of the pedestal fan that sat on the floor of his bedroom back in his room in San Jose for months before Jared bothered to break it down for the recycling. For some reason the phrase is seared into his consciousness and he can’t, for all he’s worth, forget about it.  
  
It kind of works. Meaning: he dozes off.

* * *

  
  
The sound of his phone buzzing against the wooden coffee table jolts him out of a sound sleep. At first, it’s confusing, and more than a little irritating — he’s certain he put it on silent. But then he looks at the screen, and it’s an incoming call.  
  
An incoming call from his mother.  
  
Ignoring the freezing-cold bolt of panic that sprays though him — he grabs for it and picks up just before it goes to voicemail. “Hey, Mom.” He doesn’t recognize his own voice, thick with sleep.  
  
“Hi, sweetie.” She sounds cautious, a little nervous, and he groans internally. This isn’t an emergency call; it’s a call about — the other thing. He doesn’t know why it takes him by surprise. It’s not as if they don’t have internet access in Tulsa, and if they hadn’t found out on their own, someone else would have certainly broken the news by now. “How is… how’s everything?”  
  
Richard sighs, rubbing his eyes with his free hand, desperately willing himself to wake the fuck up. “Everything’s fine. Sorry, I just woke up.”  
  
“Oh, I hope I’m not — interrupting anything,” says his mother, and her polite Midwestern stammer, for some reason, provokes only a slight pang of irritation that Richard tries immediately to tamp down.  
  
“No. Nothing. I was just taking a nap,” he says. “Alone.”  
  
“Of course,” she says.  
  
There’s a brief silence, and Richard adds, “So is this about that article, or…”  
  
“I was just saying to your father, what a horrible thing to write about someone!” she exclaims, and Richard blinks, momentarily confused. “You know, I always tell the kids at work, you can’t believe everything people write on the internet, and this is just one of those things. Anyone can write all kinds of lies, and —”  
  
“Oh,” says Richard, as the understanding colors his cheeks. This is — not how he wanted to expected this conversation to take place. “Uh. Actually, I, uh —” His mom falls silent as she hears him stuttering, and finally he manages to get enough traction to rip off the band-aid. “Actually, I, uh, it was. True. Gavin and I are — he’s. I’m.” And here he forces himself to laugh, just to lighten the moment even as his internal organs twist and cringe into a crumpled-origami-paper mess of tissue and blood and bile. “I guess it’s not a secret anymore.”  
  
Silence, uncomfortable silence, on the other end of the line for a few moments, before: “Well, that’s great too!” And Richard blinks again, taken aback.  
  
“You’re not, like, mad.”  
  
“Why would we be?” She sounds genuinely confused, as though she could possibly be more confused than Richard in the moment, and he threads an agitated hand through his hair, tugging at the roots.  
  
None of this is going as expected.  
  
“You know,” he says after a moment. “You and Dad… the church… I don’t…”  
  
“The Episcopalian Church walked in Tulsa’s Pride this year, Richard!” she says, a cautionary tone. “You should have known we’d accept you. No matter what.”  
  
“So you’re not, like?” Words aren’t really working. He tries anyway. “Finding out that way didn’t…”  
  
“Obviously, we would’ve preferred to hear it from you,” says his mom, and she sounds only the slightest bit put out by it. “We have a Google Alert on your name, though, you know.”  
  
“Right.” Of course they do.  
  
“I guess the important thing,” she says slowly, “is that you’re happy. Are you happy?”  
  
There’s a creak in the floorboards behind Richard, and he turns around to see Gavin standing under the arched entryway to the den, tablet in one hand and dark undereye circles looking even more pronounced, somehow, in the afternoon light seeping in through the windows. He looks older and kind of tired — presumably, that’s the stress — and his clothes are actually wrinkled, which Richard thinks might be a first. He raises both eyebrows at Richard, a silent question, and Richard points at his phone and mouths, My mom.  
  
 “Yeah,” he says after a brief pause. “Yeah, I’m happy. I mean, not about the whole — the current situation, I’m really fucking pissed about that, but yeah, about the other stuff, yeah. We’re good.”  
  
“Well, your father’s outside mowing the lawn, but otherwise I’d put him on,” she says. “We’ll call you later, okay? We — I love you, Richie.”  
  
“Same,” he mutters. “I, uh, say hi to Kaitlin if you call her.”  
  
As he drops his phone back to the table, he looks up to see Gavin crossing straight to him. He crowds Richard back onto the couch, nestling into his space. Richard lets him. Richard likes this. Richard doesn’t mind feeling crowded, under certain circumstances, when it’s Gavin pushing his way into his airspace and readjusting.  
  
He just smells really fucking good.  
  
“My mom,” Richard explains as he tucks his head against Gavin’s chest. “She thought that CodeRag post was, like, a mean rumor. She thought I was being cyberbullied.”  
  
Gavin chortles — it’s the only way to describe the droll little laugh that comes out of him in response. “You told her, I assume?”  
  
“She took it okay,” Richard says. “Like, she didn’t seem mad or anything. I don’t know if she really gets it. She said the important thing is that I’m happy.”  
  
“Mm.” Richard has his eyes closed, but he can feel and hear Gavin taking a deep sniff of his hair, and he smirks. Fucking weirdo. He doesn’t pull away, though. “I wanted to say, like, doesn’t it bother you guys that I never bothered to tell you myself? Like, probably sucks to find out your only son is bi because of a Google News alert, but—”  
  
“Well, you’re the one who never bothered to tell them,” Gavin counters, and Richard opens his eyes again, sits up with a heavy sigh.  
  
“It wasn’t that easy.”  
  
“Interesting. You were rather blasé about this subject three days ago.”  
  
“It’s different when it’s your parents,” Richard says in frustration. “Like, especially —”  
  
“Are they religious?” Gavin interrupts. “I always forget, this is the Midwest we’re talking about.”  
  
“They were pretty religious when I was young,” he shrugs. “Less now, I guess. Or, like, same amount, but different. They said their church marched in Pride this year. So that’s fucking weird.”  
  
“Baptist?”  
  
“Episcopalian.” Richard sighs. “My sister’s conservative, but she doesn’t live there anymore. She married some guy she met in college and moved to New Jersey.”  
  
“What part of New Jersey?”  
  
“Millburn. She has, like, a jobby-job. HR or something. Her husband’s super Italian, he couldn’t live away from his family. He’s a firefighter. It’s weird that we’ve never talked about all this.”  
  
Gavin raises both palms in a shrug. “You were correct earlier. We did, more or less, skip the getting-to-know-you pleasantries and jumped straight into the sex and emotional entanglement. There’s plenty I don’t know about you. Plenty more you don’t know about me.”  
  
“What were you doing while I was asleep?” Richard asks. “Just napping yourself?”  
  
“Unfortunately, I didn’t have the chance. I took two conference calls and consulted briefly with Denpok. It was a grand fucking disappointment.” Gavin pulls him back down into the space by his side, and Richard allows it again, tilting his head up to be kissed. Gavin kisses him, and for a brief moment everything feels normal again. Gavin mouths at his jaw, his neck, and Richard’s eyes slide shut.  
  
It occurs to him briefly that it’s been a long time — a few days, at least, since Monday night, that’s it’s been an entire business week since they’ve had any kind of sex. Which is more shocking than it has any right to be, because what’s the point of this if they’re not fucking? If he’s not actively getting fucked by Gavin Belson, then what’s the point — is it just a relationship? Jesus. Richard doesn’t allow himself to think about that. Gavin pulls him onto his lap, spinning Richard around to straddle him, and he takes hold of either side of his face and presses their foreheads together and sighs, oddly content, against his kiss.  
  
“Hey,” Richard can’t help saying. “Pay attention to me.”  
  
Gavin gives him a bemused look of consternation. “I think that’s what I’m doing.”  
  
“Stop trying to, like, be present or whatever,” Richard says, wriggling a little in his lap just because, and bites down on Gavin’s lower lip. “Just, like, pay attention to me.”  
  
Gavin looks annoyed but also turned on, and he responds by kissing down Richard’s neck, down his throat to his shirt collar, leaving marks and hickeys that will, God willing, fade by the time they take the jet back to Palo Alto. He knows how to work Richard, knows how to take him apart, the end result being that Richard is achingly, excruciatingly turned on by the time Gavin unbuttons his shirt. Gavin swaps their positions, puts him back with his back against the couch cushions and hovers over him, leaving a trail of wet kisses and bruises and nips down his chest: not teasing, but carefully targeting each place he knows makes Richard writhe.  
  
When he reaches down to grip Richard’s cock through his jeans, Richard’s hips buck up without his express permission; he’s already that gone. Gavin takes his time undoing the button and zipper; he pulls them just far enough down Richard’s legs, taking his boxers with him, pushing his shirt a few inches up his stomach, leaving his cock on display between the two planes of fabric. Gavin slides to the floor between his knees. Grins up at him, showing only a small sliver of teeth between his lips. This is hotter than it has any right to be.  
  
“Jesus,” Richard says, and then, “okay, don’t show off.”  
  
Gavin licks one hot line, from his balls up to the tip of his cock, and Richard twitches. “Don’t tell me what to do, you little shit.”  
  
“Do a better job, then,” Richard says, but his voice is weak and then his words give out entirely as Gavin takes him all the down in one smooth, easy swallow. Richard tries not to thrust his hips, because that’s kind of rude, but it’s not like he’s in control of his movements right now, and Gavin just hums and doesn’t even choke as his head hits the back of his throat.  
  
It doesn’t exactly last long or anything, because Gavin puts all he’s got into it and Richard’s so on edge to begin with. Still, though: Gavin takes him like a fucking champ, like for his career’s next act he’s going to disrupt blowjobs, and when Richard comes down his throat he swallows, mostly, but holds just a little on his tongue, long enough to rise up and kiss him, hard and sloppy enough for Richard to taste himself.  
  
Richard closes his eyes. He thrusts his tongue into Gavin’s mouth, pulls him back on top of him. When he reaches down to palm the bulge in his pants, though, Gavin pulls away, shaking his head slightly.  
  
“Later,” he says, and then adds, “after dinner, perhaps.”  
  
Richard frowns. “I want to —”  
  
“Let me rephrase, Richard,” Gavin says. “I want you to make me wait.”  
  
Well, fine. He’s not going to argue with that. He presses the heel of his palm into Gavin’s erection and watches him wince and gasp above him. “Fine,” he says weakly. “Maybe later.”  
  
“Maybe?”  
  
Richard pieces together a smirk with what he’s got available of his wits and understanding of what Gavin actually wants here. “Maybe,” he shrugs, all noncommital, and Gavin moans again, which means he did the right thing. Cool.  
  
They sleep well that night, despite everything. Gavin actually cooks again — this is new, as it is in California. Before the past couple months, Richard has only known food to appear, fully prepared, in his cavernous fridge, evidently delivered by some kind of macro-paleo meal service he pays upward of several thousand dollars for each month. It's odd, and interesting, because he's really not a bad cook: Richard watches him grill steaks on the electric grill on the deck, and his mouth waters despite himself. There's wine, which Gavin doesn't really drink, and beers, which Richard does. After dinner, they sit on the front porch and talk in quiet, relaxed tones about topics that aggressively are not the reason they're here in the first place.

It is, all things considered, much more relaxing than it has any right to be.

 

* * *

 

When Richard wakes up the next morning, the bed is empty; this doesn't come as a surprise. He gropes over the side of the mattress for last night's boxers and wanders through the house, yawning and groggy, in search of coffee. The coffeemaker, however, proves impossible for Richard to operate without coffee first — an ironic fucking Catch-22 if he's ever experienced one — so with the mug in his hand, he sets off through the silent rooms.

The blinds that hang over the floor-to-ceiling glass that separates the living room from the porch are still shut, but Gavin is nowhere to be found throughout the rest of the house. Basic probability dictates that he's doing yoga on either the front porch or the back deck, and Richard thinks it over. He swings open the door and comes face to face with Gavin, in his sweatpants and black t-shirt, and Jack Barker, in jogging gear.

Richard drops the mug. It shatters cleanly in three on the stone floor of the entryway.

"Fuck!" says Richard, for lack of anything else to say.

He can't remember the last time he looked Barker in the face — not since the box deal went south, he thinks, and they certainly haven't been on civil terms since long before then. Jack peers at him in his turtle-y way through the doorway, and Richard involuntarily hunches forward, his body trying to conceal as much of itself as possible.

"Oh, howdy, Richard," Barker says in that ingratiatingly folksy way that makes Richard want to grind his molars all the way to dust. "Did Gavin forget to tell you that we're neighbors here?"

"I, uh, yeah, he might've forgot to mention it," Richard stammers, running a panicked hand through his hair as the other tries in vain to cover up his bare chest and the hickeys Gavin had left there the night before.

Gavin laughs nervously, wiping a bead of yoga sweat gracefully from his forehead while giving Richard a pleading look. "Slipped my mind. Jack, I apologize, we'll continue catching up later. Do you need me, Richard?"

"I — no," Richard says quickly. "I'm fine."

"Oh," says Gavin after a moment, and he shrugs. "Okay, then." And he turns back to Jack, just as engaged in the moment as ever.

Richard turns on his heel and storms back inside, letting his feet fall a little more loudly than necessary on the hardwood floors.

 

* * *

  
  
Gavin goes off on a bike ride not too long after that, pedaling off on his recumbent and leaving Richard alone in the house for the morning. Which suits him fine. He takes a little walk downtown, gets a cold brew from a coffee shop and sips it slowly on the way back, savoring it in the bright, dry summer sun. The house is quiet when he gets back, and he lets the door click shut behind him as he steps inside.  
  
It’s not just that Gavin didn’t tell him that he and Jack are, apparently, neighbors here — well, no, actually it is that. The secrecy, that’s what he doesn’t like. Hiding things. There are so many things that Gavin doesn’t bother to tell him, and Richard chalks a decent 80% of them up to matters of business and privacy and probably sometimes national cybersecurity, but then there are things like this. The way he sees it is this: Gavin’s default setting is überprivacy. Gavin’s default is don’t ask, don’t tell. Gavin has spent his entire life coaxing everyone close to him, Richard included, into signing extensive contracts stipulating that they not sell the details of their relationships and private matters discussed therein to business competitors or to the press, and it follows — through the art of logical deduction and fucking knowing the guy — that he wouldn’t be so good at, like, sharing unnecessary truths.  
  
And that’s the thing, that’s what makes him absolutely the craziest out of all of this. There’s nothing Gavin is better at than obfuscation. Almost two years into this and there’s so much that he’s never bothered to explain.  
  
Sipping at the last dregs of his iced coffee, Richard wanders through the house, still stewing, then doubles back. He doesn’t remember this closet being here yesterday — although he was exhausted, and distracted, and didn’t really pay much attention during Gavin’s little tour anyway. He tries the door, and finds it locked, but the passcode is the same as all of Gavin’s others, and Richard smirks. He really needs to have a fucking talk with the old dude about security.  
  
Not now, though. He shuts the closet door behind him and uses his phone flashlight to look for a light switch. Finds it, flips it on: his stomach flips in confusion. The closet is tiny and bare, not even a fucking rack for clothing: just a file cabinet near the end, and the single bare lightbulb, swaying from a chain hanging from the ceiling. But it’s spotlessly clean, nary a cobweb in sight, and for some reason, this is even stranger. Richard is suddenly struck with the full-body chills and the odd sensation that he is in some sort of bunker — Gavin’s odd little doomsday room.  
  
The movie 10 Cloverfield Lane comes to mind. The girl from Scott Pilgrim was great in that, he thinks, and then shakes his head. This is clearly not the time.  
  
But he takes a couple steps forward, still holding his phone in one hand and his coffee cup in the other, and the ice jostles in the plastic cup as he sets it on the floor and kneels to try the cabinet drawer. It slides open smoothly, which surprises him — locked door or no, he has no idea what the fuck Gavin’s hiding in here. Money, he expects, or documents — private contracts, more non-disclosure agreements between himself and all the other men he’s fucked. (The idea of seeing these, actually, piques his interest. Gavin doesn’t talk about these things, even when he’s pressed. It’s — not terrible.)  
  
But instead, all he finds are envelopes, the paper old and delicate, and Richard turns one over to examine the front. It’s addressed to Gavin Belson, 9583 Estera Street in San Jose, in a tiny cramped hand, and the return address —  
  
Richard’s stomach churns. It’s from Peter Gregory.  
  
He glances at the postmark. This is old — January 1987. Heart in his throat, he slides open the envelope as carefully as he can and removes the single sheet of paper. It’s written in pen on a sheet torn from a yellow legal pad, and, like, look.  
  
This is way beyond a breach of privacy, right? This is totally unethical. If Gavin knew, he’d be fucking furious. He’d have Richard’s ass on the next flight out to California before he could even explain. He’d even make him fly commercial — or even worse, coach. And reading this is only going to make him feel guilty. Like, insanely so. There’s no upshot to this, other than that he has another thing to hide from everyone. It’s just another piece pulled out of the Jenga tower that is his personal life, and quite possibly the thing that’s going to make it topple.  
  
But on the other hand… he really wants to read this fucking letter.  
  
He takes care as he holds it up closer to his eyes. The pen is a little bit faded, and Peter’s handwriting is tiny, brutalist block letters like ants on the page. Richard licks his lips, his insides twisting with guilt and excitement, and he reads.  
  
  
_Gavin,  
  
I had a thought the other night regarding an offhand comment you made during our trip to Berlin last month. You will remember. It was in response to the idea that, by the end of the millennium, Microsoft intends to place a personal computer in each household in America. The concept was far from preposterous, but it was posited with such an air of indifference and predestination that you seemed remarkably unimpressed. “Sell it to us,” you whispered in my ear at that dinner table. “That’s an insane statement and he doesn’t seem to recognize the insanity. There’s magic in there. Give us the magic.”  
  
In the moment, you will remember that I was not amused. I may have asked you to be quiet so as to be able to hear the speaker more clearly. But in my isolation these past few days, I have not been able to stop thinking about that moment, and I find more and more that it encapsulates a fundamental attribute I have always found extremely desirable in you.  
  
Everyone really does believe you’re two years older than you are. Such an inconsequential lie, in the grand scheme of things, that it barely makes sense to bother with it. But I understand the impetus and your desire to be taken seriously. That is the magic. That’s the magic you’re selling everyone: not content to coast on the reputation of the boy wonder, you have taken pains to make yourself and your public profile seem less extraordinary in the pursuit of legitimacy. And yet — the ability you possess, to speak to friends and strangers alike with such ease and convince them of probabilities that have yet to become facts, that, too, is the magic.  
  
Barring an unforeseen postal disaster, I will be home by the time you receive this letter. It was just an idle thought that needed to be transcribed. In any case: the weather here is terrible. I very much wish you were with me tonight. I miss you with a degree of ferocity one might characterize as alarming.  
  
Love,  
  
Peter_  
  
  
Richard’s head spins, all fog and delirium, as he scans the contents of the letter, again and again. Tries to make heads or tails of it, but can’t. Something about a lie about age, and a dinner with… Bill Gates? Was this cocky teenage Gavin making fun of Bill Gates to his face in 1987? When he would have been — Richard does the math — either 17 or 19? Somehow, that’s the most believable part of the whole fucking thing. But —  
  
That last part.  
  
Love.  
  
And all the other parts, really. _A fundamental attribute I have always found extremely desirable in you. A degree of ferocity one might characterize as alarming._ The language is not flowery, but precise, Richard notices. Scalpel-like. The meaning of one word cannot be mistaken for any other, and this is by design. Peter always meant what he said and said what he meant, like the fucking elephant in the Dr. Seuss book.  
  
Richard folds the letter along the creases and slides it back into the envelope, putting it back into its place in the stack. But he doesn’t reach for the next one. It feels too real, too intimate, but not in a good way. Like seeing his grandmother naked. It makes him feel voyeuristic and grimy, like some kind of peeping tom. Instead, he just looks at the postmark dates. This thick stack ranges from 1986 to 1988, and the next one picks up in January of 1989. By the early 90s, they’ve sparsed out a bit — presumably they were on email by that time, Richard thinks, until he reaches the end of the second stack, dated 1995, and looks at the last envelope.  
  
This one is not from Peter. It’s addressed to him, with “G B” scrawled in the return address space, and postmarked from October of 2001. The front has been canceled with a faded red RETURN TO SENDER stamped across it like a scarlet A.  
  
Heart beating in his throat, Richard turns it over, but hesitates. It’s still sealed, never been opened, and he can’t — this is too dangerous, Gavin will know, there’s no way he won’t. Judging from how fucking clean this room is, there’s no way he doesn’t come in here, like, all the time. But still.  
  
But still.  
  
Richard vacillates for a petrified moment before he clenches his jaw and glances around the tiny room. This is so, so fucking wrong of him. So he sets it aside, and goes back to the pile of letters from Peter.  
  
He reads them all. Hunched over the pile, sitting on the floor of the tiny, cramped closet, he devours letter after letter, starting from the beginning, February 1986. Peter’s cramped, blocky handwriting becomes easier to decipher over time, and his letters themselves become less stilted, the flow of his writing more natural.  
  
Only having half the story is no object. He wonders what gaps Gavin’s letters might have filled in, but the puzzle side of his brain almost doesn’t want to know. By mid-1988, Peter’s letters were feverish in pace, his handwriting growing even more cramped to fit as many words on the page as possible. The word love factors in with less regularity than Richard might have guessed, but its presence dominates the narrative — because it is a narrative, he thinks, the rise of it all.  
  
He might have known this was what they were. Even if CodeRag hadn’t bothered to spell it out so explicitly, Richard still would have known. Gavin doesn’t talk about it, but he’s not subtle, either. He loses himself in the letters for the better part of two hours, chewing the dry skin on his bottom lip to shreds. The ice at the bottom of his plastic coffee cup has long turned to a lukewarm puddle by the time he sets the last one aside. His back pops when he stretches, then pops again.  
  
It occurs to him that Gavin is probably home by now, and with his pulse rattling, he carefully gathers up the envelopes in their painstakingly unaltered order and stows them back in the filing cabinet. Only the last one gives him pause. Runs his thumb over the sealed back flap, and thinks.  
  
Steam, he could steam it open — but there’s no way Gavin wouldn’t notice, walking into the kitchen to see him holding an old letter over a teakettle. In any case, he can’t do it here; he’d have to wait until he’s back in California, in the privacy of the incubator. If he just takes it, what are the odds he’d be caught? How often can Gavin come in here, anyway?  
  
But if he did catch him — or if he even noticed it was gone —  
  
Richard swallows, and he picks up the letter as he stands up. Carefully, doing his best not to wrinkle or crease it, he tucks it into his back pocket, laying his t-shirt over the half that sticks up. He’ll figure it out. He has to know. He gathers up his coffee cup, double-checks the tiny closet to ensure he’s not left any trace of his presence here, and switches off the light before he slips back out the door and makes a beeline to stow the letter in an inner pocket of his laptop bag.  
  
Gavin’s bike is parked on the front porch, and so it follows that he must be home. Heart still rattling in his chest, Richard zips his bag again. “Gavin?” His voice echoes. The house is too quiet.  
  
“Bedroom!”  
  
Richard follows the sound of his voice, wondering what the fuck he’s been doing these past couple hours.  
  
The answer, it turns out: he’s been tweeting.

 

* * *

  
  
**[TRANSCRIPT VIA STORIFY.COM. SOME TWEETS NO LONGER AVAILABLE.]**  
  
**C.J. Cantwell @CJCantwell** Interesting that @gavinbelson has been off the radar for past 3 days.  
  
**Gavin Belson @gavinbelson** @CJCantwell off the radar? I thought you knew exactly where I am.  
  
**Gavin Belson @gavinbelson** But fine. @CJCantwell Not that any of you vultures deserve the truth, but let’s play ball  
  
**Gavin Belson @gavinbelson** Yes, I am a gay man. I never hid this from anyone I know personally. So you were half correct, @CJCantwell  
  
**Gavin Belson @gavinbelson** I have always requested privacy and respect in regard to my personal life. I’m not a Kardashian. Who I date has no bearing on my ability to run a company  
  
**Gavin Belson @gavinbelson** There is nothing egregious about said requests. I don’t discuss my personal life with the press. End of story.  
  
**Gavin Belson @gavinbelson** You, @CJCantwell, know this. I have granted multiple exclusives to your blog before. Hooli has given @CodeRag more than its fair amount of leeway  
  
**Gavin Belson @gavinbelso** n In journalism, there’s a concept known as ‘ethics’. Perhaps you don’t remember your time at U of Wisconsin’s j-school, @CJCantwell  
  
**Gavin Belson @gavinbelson** So I’ll refresh you. @CJCantwell ETHICS dictate that outing a private citizen without their consent is not done if the outing is not a matter of public interest  
  
**C.J. Cantwell @CJCantwell** Sorry to interrupt, @gavinbelson, but isn’t your status as a gay man a matter of public interest to the countless young LGBT people interested in a career in tech?  
  
**Gavin Belson @gavinbelson** @CJCantwell this was never about young gay kids and you know it, you atrocious wench  
  
**Gavin Belson @gavinbelson** You want to pull the ‘think of the young gay kids’ card, @CJCantwell? Fine. Donate $5000 to Hooli’s AIDS charity right now. I’ll wait  
  
**Gavin Belson @gavinbelson** @CJCantwell Donate $5000 to our AIDS fund and you can write all the hit pieces about me and my sexuality you want.  
  
**Gavin Belson @gavinbelson** That goes for any blog or news outlet covering or aggregating @CodeRag story on my sexual orientation  
  
**Gavin Belson @gavinbelson** You want to pretend this is about gay community, back it up. Put your money where your blogs are  
  
**Gavin Belson @gavinbelson** Donate $5K to @HooliCure and you can write all the ill-informed, privacy-invading totally unethical coverage of my privat elife you choose  
  
**Gavin Belson @gavinbelson** but if you don’t I know this “matter of public interest to the community” has nothing to do with helping gay kids or the community at all  
  
**Gavin Belson @gavinbelson** and if you think that extends to having named @hendricks_R in the course of this embarrassment masquerading as journalism, you’re dumber than I tho  
  
**Gavin Belson @gavinbelson** because every outlet that ran his name alongside mine without consent (ie ALL OF THEM): you have 2 choices  
  
**Gavin Belson @gavinbelson** 1) retract the stories and admit wrongdoing, terminate the employment of the editors responsible for outing a private citizen  
  
**Gavin Belson @gavinbelson** or 2) lose everything. You won’t know when. You won’t see it coming. I have good lawyers. I’ll wait my turn  
  
**Gavin Belson @gavinbelson** But you’ll see it coming. And you’ll regret every decision you made that led you to it. Mark words  
  
**Gavin Belson @gavinbelson** PR telling me to stop tweeting. I’ll leave with this  
  
**Gavin Belson @gavinbelson** You, @CJCantwell, are an embarrassment to your field, and I certainly hope the self satisfaction you’ve felt these past few days was worth it  
  
**Gavin Belson @gavinbelson** @cjcantwell but your ‘sources’ are worse. And when our legal team discovers their identities they’ll wish they never opened their mouths.  
  
**Gavin Belson @gavinbelson** @cjcantwell so here’s a game. Either donate to @HooliCure. Or out your sources, the way you outed @hendricks_R and myself.  
  
**Gavin Belson @gavinbelson** Do either, and we’re square. Hooli won’t pursue litigation against you @cjcantwell  
  
**Gavin Belson @gavinbelson** @cjcantwell or you can do nothing, and we’ll see you in court.  
  
**Gavin Belson @gavinbelson** @cjcantwell choice is yours.  
  
**Gavin Belson @gavinbelson** That’s all.  
  
**C.J. Cantwell @CJCantwell** Well, that was a wild ride from start to finish.

 

* * *

  
  
"What the _fuck_ did you do that for?!" Richard shouts.

He doesn't mean to shout. It's not like he intends the words to come out like that. To Gavin's credit, he barely blinks. In the hour since the tweets went up, Richard assumes he's already heard the riot act from everyone at Hooli, his lawyers, anyone with a personal vested interest in Gavin Belson keeping his shit together and not taking a battering ram to the tattered remains of his public reputation. He stays remarkably cool, actually, as Richard yanks at his own hair, pacing the room in agitation.

"In hindsight," Gavin says coolly, "I can see how I might have acted rashly."

"Rashly." Richard throws up his hands and, helpless and hapless, sinks to the floor, falling to his knees and then down onto his front. "Fuck. Gavin."

"I had some time to stew about it on my ride," Gavin says. He's leaning on the doorframe, arms folded across his front. Oddly placid, like he always is — it’s either cold stone or hot lava with him, smooth as glass. The anger cools to obsidian so quickly and smoothly it's as though he was never angry at all. "I thought it over. You are - they didn't need to bring you into it. They crossed the line with that step. I told you, if they brought your name up, I'd slit their throats."

"I thought you were just being reassuring," Richard moans. "I mean —" And here he stops himself. Because the truth is, he's kind of flattered. He doesn't hate the idea of Gavin applying all that mental acuity and unresolved anger to the pursuit of destroying their shared enemies. Fuck, even the fact that they _have_ shared enemies now excited him a little; he's barely thought about that until now, his worries preoccupied with more pressing concerns about the board and his parents. 

"Look," Gavin says quietly, and he sounds serious, sincere. Oddly genuine. He's looking down at Richard on the floor, all recalcitrance, for perhaps the first time. "I can't apologize for this."

"Don't," Richard mumbles. "Hooli's probably gonna make you do it anyway, huh."

Gavin shrugs. "Hooli doesn't make _me_ do anything."

There's a quiet moment between them, a heavy, loaded silence, and Richard closes his eyes, heaving a sigh. "Ask me. Before you do something like that. Fighting for my honor or whatever."

"I couldn't find you," Gavin frowns. "What were you doing?"

"I, uh, I was reading," Richard says quickly, biting the inside of his cheek. "I got caught up in something. Sorry."

"Oh?" Gavin sounds interested. "What were you reading?"

"An epistolary novel. On my e-reader. Kind of boring. I can't recommend it." He's not a good liar. He's never been a good liar. But Gavin's about as good at deducing when someone's lying to him as Richard is at obfuscation. He just nods and looks away, examining his nail beds, looking the slightest bit chastened.

"Richard," he says after a moment. "I want to go to Tulsa."

Richard blinks. Furrows his brow in confusion. "What the fuck's in Tulsa?"

A heavy sigh and a moue of distaste, and Gavin articulates, sounding exhausted. "Your family, Richard. I'd like to — it's strange that we've never met."

Richard sits up cross-legged, no less confused even for the explication. "Not really? I mean, they didn't even know about us until last night — I've never met your parents — it's not really, like. Why do we need to do this? Is this a PR thing? Why?"

Gavin sighs again, and takes a seat next to Richard on the floor. He sits up straight where Richard slouches. He looks even more tired now than when they got here. "You're not on board."

"I have questions." Richard licks his chapped lips. "Why? Like, this seems really sudden?"

"I want to do the whole conventional thing. Since the universe seems to have decided that we are destined to follow at least a pretense of convention —"

"Talk like a normal person."

"— I want to meet your parents. For God's sake. You really just want to keep doing the same thing as before? That's not possible, Richard." Gavin runs the flat of his palm over his face as he exhales. "I don't know if you grasp how much of a fundamental shift the events of the last week have had on the lives we lead. There is no going back to normal. You're worried about the way Raviga's people will react? I'm worried about _us_. I don't want this to —"

And here Gavin stops, seems to compose himself before licking his lips and shaking his head. Richard takes the moment to interject. "And Tulsa has... what all to do with it? Like, I know. My parents and all. But how does this explicitly help that?"

Gavin shrugs. "Are you ashamed of this?"

"What?" The question catches Richard from the side, a sucker punch. It knocks the air out of him, and he slouches further, trying to catch his breath, recalibrate before he tries to answer. "Is that some kind of —"

"You hadn't told your friends. You hadn't told your parents. You seemed very agitated when CodeRag published your name."

"Because you made me sign a contract saying that I wouldn't tell anyone!" Richard protests. "It wasn't —"

"The contract prohibited selling intimate details of our relationship to competitors or the press. I never said you couldn't talk about it."

"Yeah, well," Richard says, annoyed. "Better safe than sorry, or whatever. And it's not like you were going around bragging about it, either. We're supposed to be enemies."

Gavin snorts with laughter. He cups a possessive hand around Richard's ankle and leans in a little closer.

"I apologize," he says after a moment, "if we got our wires crossed. I want to be clear. This isn't a secret anymore. It hasn't needed to be for quite a while." He pauses again, and Richard takes a deep breath, nods.

"So?" asks Richard. "What are we doing?"

Gavin licks his lips. He shrugs. "I can call Michèl. Tell him there's been a change of plans and that we're flying down to Tulsa before we go back to California tomorrow. We'll stay in a hotel, of course, I wouldn't want to burden your parents —"

"Or stay in a poor person's house," Richard finishes. Gavin smacks his ankle softly, not even a real warning, but Richard smirks back at him anyway. "Okay."

"Okay?" says Gavin, and Richard swallows.

"Okay. Let's go to Tulsa."


	4. Oklahoma?

He hasn't been back here in much too long — a few years, really, at the very least. It's actually kind of funny. His parents have switched off the past few years, visiting him in California one Christmas and Kaitlin in New Jersey the next, almost as if they knew, and were admitting defeat, that there was nothing in Oklahoma worth coming home for.

"I want the Richard Hendricks history tour," Gavin said on the short flight down from Wyoming, but Richard's having a hard time coming up with more than two or three things that might possibly be of interest here to the eccentric billionaire he's chosen to fuck. Food? Barbecue? Gavin doesn't eat anything that isn't organic, non-GMO, and/or in accordance with his paleo thing. Fuck, Gavin has a hard time accepting that the airport car rental doesn't even have any Teslas on offer. 

"Thank you so much," Richard says as he wrests an irritated Gavin away from the counter, registration packet for the only Prius in the garage in one hand. He turns to Gavin, who is, essentially, pouting. "This is the Midwest. You say Tesla, people think coil."

"Richard, I hardly think anyone here would be able to pick a tesla coil out of a lineup of rudimentary electrical engineering equipment —" Gavin says, and Richard groans emphatically, cutting him off.

"This? Right here? Don't do this. Just, like —" He gives an exasperated, flappy gesture with both arms to the mostly deserted airport garage. "Try to be normal. For a day and a half, try to be normal."

 

* * *

 

 

His parents' house is just as he remembers, down to the American flags flapping jauntily on either side of the front door. He shoots a look back at Gavin as they jog up the front walk. He's dressed way too fucking nicely, even for vacation, in black chinos and one of those deceptively expensive, tailored button-downs. He's wearing a tweed sport coat. Richard didn't even see him bring this on the trip, but apparently he keeps a jacket on board the jet, "just in case something arises."

"You look like I'm bringing my professor home from my third semester of college," Richard groans, and jerks his head at the jacket. 

Gavin smiles cagily. "That's an intriguing scenario."

"Ugh." Richard's dick twitches traitorously in his pants and he closes his eyes for a moment, pointedly _not_ thinking about grading papers all night in Gavin's office like a devoted TA or bending over his desk, hands scrabbling for purchase and a few points of promised extra credit. He didn't even know he _had_ a teacher/student thing. Jesus. "Just, you know. Try not to freak them out too much. Be normal."

"Yes, I've heard. Normalcy." Gavin sighs. "You must think I'm some kind of —"

"Insane, pretentious billionaire whose Twitter rant about destroying a small-time gossip blog is currently the front page news story on CNN?" Richard can't help finishing. "Yeah. Dunno where I got that impression."

Gavin doesn't go to the effort of a retort, just shakes his head as Richard rings the bell, and right on cue, the dogs howl, and his mother clatters to the door, pushing aside the curtains to glance out the window before throwing both French doors open.

"Richie!" She wastes no time pulling him into an ecstatic hug, kissing him on both cheeks, then holds him away at arm's length with a beatific grin. "Oh, goodness, what a delightful surprise, sweetheart. You should have told us you were coming —"

"Impromptu trip," Richard shrugs and glances at the ground. "I didn't — you know, we wanted to surprise you. Uh." His mother finally looks from Richard to the man behind him, and a look of recognition floods her face as well. "Uh," he says again. "Mom, Gavin Belson?"

Gavin extends a hand, and shakes his mother's with enthusiasm. "Mrs. Hendricks," he says, all snake oil charm, and Richard bites his tongue. "It's a pleasure to finally meet you, even under such odd circumstances."

"Yes, of course," says Mrs. Hendricks, and there's a dawning sense of understanding about her as she steps back. "I, ah, come in."

From inside the house, in his father's booming baritone: "Who is it, Susan?"

"Just you wait and see!" she calls over her shoulder, and pulls them both into the house with a single sweeping gesture.

Nothing in this house has changed since the day he moved out. Fuck, nothing in this house has changed since his childhood, really, save for necessary upgrades: the TV swapped out for a massive flatscreen a few years back, the ceiling fans finally giving way to central AC some time while Richard was in college. Nothing in this house has changed except for Richard himself. He casually wipes his clammy palms on his pants and widens his stance a little, trying to steel himself for — whatever.  
  
“That can’t be my kid,” says Mr. Hendricks, and Richard shrugs. “What the hell, Richard, get over here.” His father looks healthy, has lost weight since his heart attack. Richard’s almost a little intimidated; his dad looks like he could probably beat him in a footrace or any kind of endurance test, really. He lights up, pulls Richard into a bear hug and claps him thrice, hard on the back.  
  
“Sorry for the surprise,” Richard says quietly as he extricates himself from his father’s vise grip. “It was a spur of the moment thing, I didn’t — I thought it would be fun to surprise.” He licks his lips, jerks his head in Gavin’s direction. “Uh, I don’t know if Mom said anything, but, uh. This is m—this is Gavin.”  
  
A long pause. A strange moment where his father seems to straighten his spine, drawing himself up to his full six-feet-three, two inches taller than Gavin himself. Richard would feel very small if his mother weren’t diminutive beside him. Mr. Hendricks thrusts out his hand to shake, but Gavin’s quicker on the draw, swooping in with his most ingratiating smile plastered on, teeth gleaming, sharklike. He takes control of the handshake, ends it a beat too soon, and that’s a move Richard knows, one Gavin explained to him in detail once, a very long time ago. (“You want to make them feel like they’ve already overstayed their welcome,” he’d said, “and from there on, you control exactly how long the interaction lasts.” Richard tried it at the next board meeting. It did, actually, kind of work on everyone except for Laurie. And Russ. Well, Monica, it worked on Monica.)  
  
“It’s a pleasure to meet you, Mr. Hendricks,” says Gavin, and he’s grinning as he takes another little step closer.  
  
“Oh, please.” Richard’s father throws back his head and laughs. “Mr. Hendricks is my son. My name is George.”  
  
Richard wants to force a laugh, but everything about this situation is excruciatingly unnatural, and instead he just shoves his hands into his hoodie pockets and looks at the ceiling. His mother is grinning from ear to ear; his father is giving Gavin a cagey once-over, and Richard can tell the full-body scan isn’t going well. He coughs, instead of laughing, and manages to choke a little, but when he gets his shit together he finally forces out, “Uh, Mom, can I — I’m just super hungry, we came straight from the airport.”  
  
“Of course.” She smacks her head exaggeratedly, the old V8 commercial. “What am I doing? What can I get you? Cheese, crackers, celery, anything in the fridge.”  
  
“Oh, I — just, like, a piece of bread is fine.” Richard doesn’t know what the fuck he’s saying. Bread? He doesn’t even eat bread anymore. Gavin’s feelings about bread have ruined him for it.  “Honestly, you don’t have to make a big deal about it, I know where the kitchen is —”  
  
“Don’t be ridiculous. You need to take care of your blood sugar.” Mrs. Hendricks wraps her arm around him, shepherding him from the living room to the kitchen before he even knows what’s happening. His father follows them, with Gavin bringing up the rear, looking warily around the house, taking in the furnishings, the surroundings. Richard turns back, mouths a desperate I’m sorry. Gavin shrugs: What for?  
  
Richard doesn’t have a followup to that.  
  
In the kitchen, his mother feeds him toast and jam; he leans on the counter and answers similarly excruciating questions. “I thought we might take you to dinner,” Richard says when asked why they’re here. “You know. As a surprise. We’re only here for a night, so —”  
  
“Oh, give me time to make up the guest room,” Mrs. Hendricks says, and he and Gavin both exchange a look before leaping to demur in tandem.  
  
“That’s very kind of you, Susan, but we’ve already gotten a hotel room,” Gavin says smoothly, just as Richard shakes his head wildly. The guest room, as it’s now called, was his childhood bedroom. He wasn’t sentimental enough to beg them to keep it as it was — unlike Kaitlin, whose cheerleading pom-pons and homecoming crown still decorate the shelves in her old room — so now it’s the guest room. But it’s still, like, his bedroom. The room he slept in all through childhood, which he is not going to share with his 50-year-old boyfriend now. God no. Not if he can help it.  
  
“Well, dinner’s on us, at least,” says Mr. Hendricks heartily, and as Gavin opens his mouth to contest the point, he holds up one hand. “No, I won’t hear it. You’re the visitors, let us treat you.”  
  
“I — well. That’s very kind,” Gavin says after a faltering moment. “Let me see. I’m sure I can get us a reservation somewhere.”  
  
“Oh, it’s awfully last-minute,” says Richard’s mom, not unkindly. “And the holiday weekend and all, you’re going to have all the day trippers in from Osage County. George, why don’t you call Mahogany’s Steakhouse? See if they can squeeze you in?”  
  
Gavin takes out his phone, begins scrolling through it at lightning speed. Richard watches, brow furrowed. “Mahogany Steakhouse, you say,” he mutters. “Interesting. Not on OpenTable.” Mr. Hendricks is still reaching for the cordless phone on the kitchen counter by the time Gavin has his own up to his ear, and all Richard can do is watch, eyes darting back and forth between Gavin and his father, as Gavin begins to speak.  
  
“Yes, this is Gavin Belson, I’d like a table for four tonight — before nine, if you have a seating available. Yes. Yes, the last name is Belson, B-E-L — I’ll hold, yes.” He frowns at Richard, who can only shrug in response. Gavin rolls his eyes theatrically. They can both hear the phone ringing through the cordless phone’s receiver, and then the same host picks up on the other line.  
  
“Jimmy? This is George Hendricks, how’re you doing?” Mr. Hendricks leans back on the counter, casual as can be, one arm crossed over his chest with the other still holding the phone. “Oh, not bad, not bad. Yeah, I’m supposed to be off the red meat, what can I say? Taking my chances. Anyway, look, my son’s in town tonight, came by as a surprise to Sue and myself both. You don’t think you’d be able to squeeze us in tonight, would you? Table for four?”  
  
Gavin shoots Richard a murderous look. He doesn’t think his mother notices; she’s busy at the fridge, filling a glass of ice with water. Mr. Hendricks laughs into the phone. “Oh, great, great, that’s fantastic news. Yeah, listen, we’re just so proud of Richard, he’s a good kid. You’ll see him tonight. Thanks again, Jim.”  
  
Richard sips his water. He waits for Gavin to say something, but, blessedly, he holds back, placid smile returning to his face. “So,” he says instead. “Richard, why don’t you give me the tour?”

 

* * *

  
  
Richard drags Gavin out of his parents' home not long after confirming the reservation, and they spend the rest of the afternoon driving from place to place in Tulsa, Richard in the driver's seat and pointing out various points of interest: "That's my high school," he says as he slows down past it, and Gavin laughs.

"I couldn't picture anything more quintessentially American." He nods at the facade, _McLain Magnet High School for Science and Technology_ in big stone letters over the front doors. "I'm sure you had those big three-foot-tall lockers."

"You didn't?" Richard frowns, and Gavin shrugs.

"They're less common in California. I've always found that to be a misconception about the universality of the school experience. But then again, I was eleven when I started, so perhaps —"

"Eleven?!" Richard brakes the car abruptly. He's lucky the street is deserted; he would've been rear-ended if there were anyone behind him to do so. "What the fuck? Why didn't I know this?"

Gavin frowns. "I thought you knew. Had figured it out, with all your probing questions about my age the other day."

"What — oh, Jesus, seriously?" Richard turns to him in exasperation. And then it clicks: Peter's letter, the reference to the ruse of his age. It all makes perfect sense, Richard thinks — except that he can't mention the letters at all, fuck, he's not supposed to have read any of those. Jesus. This is more complicated than it should be. "I just thought you misspoke," he lies quickly, and Gavin shrugs.

"I assumed you had put the pieces together," he says. "My parents allowed me to skip the third and seventh grades. I graduated high school at fifteen, then entered Stanford, and met Peter Gregory shortly thereafter and began work on what would grow into Hooli. But in order to be taken seriously by the press, rather than regarded as some sort of boy genius, flash in the pan, I, ah, obfuscated the matter of my youth. It's really never been an issue."

"Huh," Richard says, for lack of anything else to say. "I guess that's something."

"I'm genuinely surprised. I really assumed you knew by now." Gavin raises both eyebrows. "Are we going to idle outside your high school indefinitely, or..."

"Right." Richard steps on the gas.

 

* * *

  
Night has fallen by the time they arrive at the steakhouse, and they meet Richard's parents in the bar. Mr. Hendricks has donned a jacket and tie since their afternoon encounter. Richard can't remember the last time he even saw Gavin wear a tie.

"George, Susan." Gavin nods politely again, through another round of dutiful handshakes, but drops the formality from his tone as soon as they're seated.

"Did you two gentlemen enjoy your afternoon?" Mr. Hendricks sips the old fashioned he brought from the bar, only half empty. His eyes flick to Richard's before darting back to Gavin's face, his dress shirt unbuttoned at the collar, the calm way he's seated. "Take a drive down to Memorial Park?"

"Richard gave me the tour," Gavin nods. "Quite a city. I've spent a little time here, but never enough."

Mr. Hendricks smiles, passes Gavin the wine list. Richard watches in trepidation as Gavin skims it. He doesn't drink much — two glasses in a night at most, claims it interferes with the flow of his energy. But Gavin drags his eyes down the list with a singular look of concentration, and then glances up, showing the list to Richard. "I could go for a bottle of the '07 Ovid red."

Richard nearly chokes as he examines the price. _You can get wine this expensive here?_ , he thinks, but then he shakes himself. Comes to his senses. Gavin's not being subtle — he's pulled this trick before, too, explained it in depth to Richard. Force your opponent to swallow his pride and accept your dominance by making an outlandish opening move they can't afford to match. Classic churlish billionaire chess. Richard kicks his ankle under the table and takes the wine list from him.

"I think I'm going to keep it light," he says. "Maybe an iced tea."

"Don't be ridiculous, Richard, this is a Ovid." Gavin smiles without teeth, then tugs it back and grins wider across the table. "You remember that beautiful winery, the weekend we stayed in Napa? You enjoyed that quite a bit. A bottle for the table, it's my treat."

"Oh, no, really, that's too kind," says Mrs. Hendricks. On her left, Richard's father cocks a brow and sips his drink again.

"Not necessary," he adds, "but very kind. I think I'll stick to a couple more of these." He raises his glass, then looks to the expectant waiter. "Old fashioned. Bulleit, if you've got it."

"Very good, sir." Turns to Gavin. "And the Ovid for you?"

Gavin shrugs. "May as well bring two glasses, just in case Richard changes his mind," he says, and with a look at his open collar, and Richard's disheveled hair, the waiter nods.

Richard relaxes only slightly as he looks at the menu. Same menu, same steakhouse he's been coming to his whole life; the only difference is that as a kid, he wasn't importuned to sit here in excruciating anticipation of the next moment of tension between Gavin and his parents. Gavin flips through the menu idly, looking at the list of steaks. Leans over to Richard, mutters below his breath. "What do you recommend?"

"I, uh, the prime rib is good," he says automatically. Shit. Red meat? Is that part of Gavin's weird diet thing? He probably would've said something if it were, but... "I think, uh, the salads are supposed to be pretty good, too." Wipes one sweaty palm on his jeans beneath the table, and grits his molars. 

"That's fine," Gavin shrugs. He looks over the menu again, eyes darting over the page in a mad, critical rush. "I like red meat, you know that. I just made you steak the other night..."

Richard chances another glance back up. “Right. Sorry.” Gavin gives him a small smile, folds the menu closed. Mr. and Mrs. Hendricks are watching them in interested silence, and Mr. Hendricks clears his throat quietly as he places his own menu at the center of the table.

"So, Mr. Belson," he says, and his voice is — odd. Not strained, but subdued. "Your life must be incredibly busy. I can't imagine  what your day-to-day must be like." An opening. Richard prays Gavin will just take it.

He sees Gavin open his mouth, but as the waiter swoops back in with a tray of drinks, he closes it again. The waiter uncorks the wine, pours a measure for Gavin to taste — then pours a glass for Gavin and one for Richard. 

Richard stares at it as Gavin raises his glass. "This is excellent, Richard," he says, and then gestures to the rest of the table. "To family, yes? Yours is lovely."

"Family," echoes the Hendricks family, in varying shades of polite enthusiasm, and Richard takes a gulp of the wine. Shit. It is _very_ good. 

Richard traces his thumb around the stem of his wine glass, leaning forward in his chair. An odd kind of silence, as though everyone at the table is thinking desperately about what to say next, before Mrs. Hendricks speaks up again with a slight smile.

"You have to forgive our awkwardness, Mr. Belson," she says. "It's just — we feel a bit out of our depth here. Your career and all —" She waves a hand through the air. "You know. George and I didn't know what to say when Richard told us."

Richard swallows hard, shoots a look at his mom. Not here, not now, this isn't the time to have the uncomfortable coming-out conversation. Smooth as a ball bearing, though, Gavin reaches over, places his hand atop Richard's, and smiles across the table with apparent ease.

"It's understandable," he says. All teeth, all confidence. "I want to apologize for how suddenly this has all come about. I've been fighting a bit of a war with the press, and it must have come as a shock to find out something so personal to Richard through a Hooli news alert."

"Oh, we use Google alerts," Mrs. Hendricks says, and Richard coughs violently into the crook of his arm before Gavin cuts her off.

"Nonetheless," Gavin says stiffly, taking his hand away from Richard's. "We just want to be square with you. I mean, it's been an incredibly trying time for both of us. The past few days... well." He takes another small sip of his wine. Richard watches, warily, from the corner of his eye. "I don't mean to overstate the difficulties you face when forced to live a public-facing life.”

Mr. Hendricks sips his own drink, leans back in his chair. Ice cubes clink against each other where they haven't already melted down. The cocktail napkin sticks to the bottom of the glass when he picks it up. Richard doesn't say a word.

"So your lawsuit against Richard's company," he says finally. “What was the end result of that, again?”

Richard freezes, flushes. Objection, he thinks, leading the witness. Evidence tampering. He has no idea what the fuck he's talking about, but the words all sound right. Gavin doesn't look flustered; in fact, he barely blinks, just leans back in his own seat and shrugs, "All on its own time. We settled."

"Lost," Richard says, trying desperately for levity in his tone but somehow only achieving smugness. He knocks his knee against Gavin's under the table, adds a smile. "You lost, dude."

"On a technicality." Gavin's knee knocks back, but the rest of him is still. "Business disagreements happen, George, I'm sure you're aware. Thirty years in the oil business..." He shrugs. "I'm a Tesla guy myself."

Mr. Hendricks laughs. "I've heard." 

"So yes. I did, at one point, attempt to sue Richard for ownership of his company, being under the impression that much of his proprietary code was, on legal terms, technically the intellectual property of Hooli," Gavin finishes as Richard takes another sweaty gulp of outrageously expensive wine. "Turns out it wasn't. And, ultimately, the deeper consequence of the entire endeavor ended up being that Richard and I found each other through it. It's always odd, how love sneaks up on you in the strangest places. So..." A deep nod, and a slight smile in Richard's direction. Richard knocks back the rest of his wine, and refills his glass. "All's well that ends well."

"Well, that's so lovely. We're just so happy to see Richard happy with someone," says Mrs. Hendricks with a smile. "Richie, sweetheart, are you feeling all right? You look a little peaked."

"I'm great," Richard says, couldn't say it quicker. "Oh, great, food's here."

The waiter's back momentarily, and they dig in; Richard stuffing his mouth with baked potato so as to avoid answering any further questions. He watches Gavin slice off a piece of his prime rib and chew it slowly, thoughtfully. The silence at the table is deafening.

"This is good," Mrs. Hendricks volunteers, gesturing with a green bean on her fork.

"Mm." Gavin nods. "Excellent." His voice is a little taut. Bald lies. Richard has learned to decipher lies from honesty only insofar as Gavin's inability to cloak his opinions in any semblance of a poker face goes. "Truth be told, it's a bit..."

"Ah?" Mr. Hendricks looks up from his own steak. "Problem? Don't be afraid to send it back, the guys in the back are great."

"No, no, everything's great," Gavin says quickly. "This is as good as the Kobe beef I had on my last trip to Tokyo. Have you ever been?" Saws off a bigger piece, and Richard kicks him again under the table, frowns as he just keeps talking. What the fuck? Is he trying to be —

The wine is good. The wine is excellent. In two solid gulps, Richard downs the remainder of his second glass. He doesn't want to think about whatever the fuck Gavin is doing — pulling his billionaire punches now, or whatever. It's like he's actually trying to make a good impression. Richard's never seen him like this before: actually kind of behaving like a regular adult human without major narcissistic tendencies, not just playing along for the sake of a deal. There's nothing in it for Gavin here: if Richard's parents don't like him, it's no skin off his back; they'll be back in California in 24 hours anyway. It's like he's specifically doing this for Richard.

More wine. Another glass. Mrs. Hendricks gives him an odd little look from the corner of her eye as Gavin monologues about energy-efficiency initiatives in the wake of Fukushima, but she doesn't interrupt to tell him to slow down. Gavin's glass is still mostly untouched. This is — new. This is weird. He can't tell if this is an anxiety attack or some kind of completely new form of mind fuck. He looks at Gavin, who is laughing at some joke his dad made, genuinely laughing, eyes crinkling and everything, and a rush of something weird and warm hits him. 

It feels like being stabbed but also like drinking boiling Jello, hot and sickly sweet.

Richard throws back all of the wine in his glass, wipes his mouth on his napkin, and announces to everyone and no one at the table in particular, "Restroom. Back in a minute." Trips away, feeling like his shoes are too big for his feet.

He's kind of tipsy. He probably should've eaten more today, because three glasses of wine shouldn't be making his head this muzzy — he pisses, then zips up, stands in front of the sink and looks at himself in the mirror with his hands waving aimlessly on autopilot under the cold water. These aren't automatic faucets. He doesn't have to wave them. It doesn't occur to his hands not to move, though, not when he's so used to the minor inconveniences that accompany the kind of technological advances meant to make everything inherently more convenient. Also, thinking too much about this fucks him up. He stops waving his hands, but keeps them cupped under the cold stream coming from the faucet.

 _Love sneaks up on you in the strangest places_. Fuck him. Selling their relationship to his parents like this, like he's trying to win over the shareholders of the Richard Hendricks Corporation. It's not — they're not in love. They were barely in a _relationship_ a week ago…

The door of the bathroom bangs open, and Richard looks over his shoulder, woozy and bewildered. If it's Gavin, he knows exactly what he needs to say.

It's not Gavin. It's his father.

Mr. Hendricks proceeds to a urinal and Richard looks back at his own reflection in the mirror, frowning. His hair's a fucking mess and his cheeks are flushed and his eyes look tired and scared. None of this makes sense.

"Watch out there, you'll get waterlogged," Mr. Hendricks says as he joins Richard at the row of sinks. Richard glances down at the sink and uncups his hands. The water hits the basin with a hard slap. Turns off the faucet. Mr. Hendricks laughs. "You all right?"

"I know you hate him," Richard says quickly. "It's okay. I mean, I hated him at first, too. He hated me! It's not like — he's a hard guy to like, I get it. But I know he's trying, I can honestly tell the difference, so just cut him a little slack, okay?"

"What?" Mr. Hendricks looks genuinely taken aback as he turns off his own faucet, reaches for a paper towel. "Richard, we don't hate him at all. Your mother and I are just — well, truth be told, it's a little intimidating."

"But he's a dick," Richard says, confused. "With the wine and everything. That was chess."

Mr. Hendricks frowns, shakes his head. He balls up the wet paper towel. It bounces off the rim of the wastebasket, and he stoops to pick it up and place it cleanly inside. "We know how people in your industry can be," he says as he straightens up. "They're a little eccentric. I mean, you were always..." He laughs, shrugs, offers Richard a pat on the arm. "He's a very charitable man, isn't he?"

"Kind of." Richard licks his lips. "I guess."

"Hey. Kid." Mr. Hendricks laughs, shaking his head as Richard, flustered, shoves his hands deep into his pants pockets, studies the front of his blue checked oxford. "You gotta calm down. This isn't — you're not in trouble."

Richard's breath catches. He furrows his brow, looks up at his father from beneath it. "I don't think —"

"It's just intimidating," Mr. Hendricks cuts him off to reiterate. "That's all." Claps Richard on the arm again, then smiles. "Besides, the way that man looks at you — admittedly, it's a bit strange for me to see, but. I guess it's just something we're all getting used to."

 _The way that man looks at you_. Richard closes his eyes slowly, places both hands on either side of the sink.

"I'll meet you back at the table," he says to the darkness. "Indigestion."

He waits until his father has left the bathroom to vomit, for the first time in months.

 

* * *

  
  
The drive back to the hotel is uncharacteristically quiet. Gavin drives; Richard having polished off the rest of the exorbitant wine by the end of the night: Gavin finds his way just fine with the GPS. Richard, still queasy, stares out through the windshield as they pass familiar street signs and storefronts in the dark. 

Gavin seems nonplussed by his silence. He drives with a benign look on his face back to the hotel, the only sound in the car the dictation of the GPS and Gavin's own occasional exhortations of annoyance at its poor directions.

The hotel is nice. It's a fine hotel. Richard went to a dance in the ballroom here as a high schooler; it's the fanciest one in Tulsa, which might not necessarily mean much to Gavin, but it meant plenty to Richard at the time. Gavin drops the rented Prius with the valet and squeezes Richard on the arm as they head for the elevator.

It's only once they're back inside the room — which is nice, again, at least as far as Richard is concerned — that he has any idea of where to even begin talking. "Uh," he says, but Gavin seems to take that as his cue to launch into a post-game breakdown of his own.

"Well," he says, "I think that went well. Your father actually knew quite a bit more about energy conservation in the Asian subcontinent than I expected, we had quite an in-depth conversation while you were in the restroom for so long. Actually, if you could pass along his email, I'd like to have my admin send him a few articles I found interesting in the New Yorker in regard to—"

"What did you mean when you said you loved me?"

Gavin barely blinks. "It was a commentary on the random and unexpected nature of where the universe chooses to introduce you to the one you're meant to be with. Did you have a problem with..." He squints. "The phrasing?"

"I didn't — you don't love me!" Richard splutters. Hoping. Praying that Gavin agrees. Praying to God and Allah and Yaweh and whatever fucking deity Gavin believes in that he'll just go with it, say it was just for show, just to win over his parents, just to make it easier on Richard to go back to his normal life. Anything.

But Gavin... doesn't. He shrugs, gives Richard a curious little look. "What makes you say that?"

"I — you — literally everything about you," Richard says blankly. "You've never said that before. You're not supposed to — that's not what this is, I thought this was about, like, stress relief? Catharsis?" He waves an indignant hand through the air. "All of that?"

"Richard, with all due respect, no part of being with you has brought _less_ stress to my life," Gavin says, all droll and smug like it's some kind of pick-up line, instead of what it is, which is kind of an insult. Jesus Christ, fuck him. "But you — you really don't understand it, do you? Good lord, Richard, look at me."

Richard steels himself in preparation to be super annoyed, like, really fucking irritated, next-level frustration. Instead, he looks up, forces himself to meet Gavin's eyes, and is surprised by what he sees. Odd seriousness. Openness, the kind of look he gets when he's just had a nice long validating chat with Denpok and been declared especially enlightened that day. "You really don't get it," Gavin repeats, reaching out to trace his thumb over Richard's bottom lip. Richard resists the urge to close his lips over it. This isn't the time. Not now, boner.

"I don't know what's to get," Richard insists, but the words falls flat.

"You and l have been together for a year and a half," Gavin says, sounding amused. "We have monogamous sex. You've made yourself very comfortable at my house. We enjoy each other's company and you'll notice that I haven't made any strategic or legal moves to undercut the potential success of your video chat app. I just met your parents and they had next to nothing to say about our difference in age or financial status. I would characterize our relationship as one in which both of us are very content..." He looks Richard up and down. "As would you, I presume?"

Richard doesn’t have an answer for that.  
  
He flops, face-first, onto the bed, and hears Gavin sigh heavily behind him.  
  
“Talk to me, Richard,” says Gavin, sounding all long-suffering and put-upon, and Richard closes his eyes and thinks about it.  
  
“What comes next?” he asks instead. “Like. In terms of your whole thing. Are you still ‘controlling the narrative’ or whatever?”  
  
He feels the bed depress as Gavin sits down beside him, and feels a hand descend heavy on the small of his back, rubbing him gently, the touch surprisingly chaste but knowing. “What do you think?” Gavin says, sounding, for the first time in a while, a little bitter. So they’re tabling the issue of the word “love” until further notice. Probably until Richard brings it up himself, because Gavin seems, for whatever reason, hell-bent on this idea that Richard needs to meet him halfway, or whatever. Well, fine, he can keep waiting.  
  
He doesn’t think about the letters from Peter Gregory.  
  
He doesn’t think about how, in some small way, he opened them because he wanted to hurt Gavin, to push him away, to give him a reason never to say any of this.  
  
He doesn’t think about having to tell the truth or own up to it. He packs that up, sticks it in the smallest lockbox at the back of his brain, and throws the key into the abyss.  
  
Instead he says, “What were you doing with Jack Barker in Wyoming?”  
  
Gavin hasn’t stopped tracing circles on his lower back, and it feels good, better than Richard wants it to. “Which question do you want me to answer?” Gavin says, the slightest bit impatient. “Next steps, or Barker?”  
  
“Sorry. Jack Barker,” Richard mumbles. “I just — I’ve been thinking on it.”  
  
Gavin sighs. “Not that it’s any of your business, but we have, from time to time, gotten together to have a drink and talk shop away from the Hooli campus. His jogging path happens to take him past my property, and he saw me performing my sun salutations on the porch. We had a coincidental run-in.”  
  
“Okay, yeah. Why did you act like I caught you in the middle of something, though?” Richard asks, prompting yet another put-upon sigh. Gavin stops rubbing his back.  
  
“Did you feel you had reason to be suspicious?”  
  
“Well, I mean, he hates me,” Richard says, a bit petulant, and Gavin laughs.  
  
“He’s a colleague. I didn’t realize it would make you so agitated.” As Richard rolls onto his back, stretching out on the mattress, Gavin looms into view over the top of him. He’s not smiling now, but that’s fine. Richard swallows, and he wants to pull him closer and push him away all at once.  
  
He doesn’t know what he wants. A fucking clue would be a good place to start.  
  
He reaches up with one heavy hand, and pulls at Gavin’s collar, pulling him down to meet his lips. He doesn’t want to have to think about this. He wants his body to make the decision for him, so that he doesn’t have to decide at all. Richard sighs into the kiss, feels the tension of the last two hours leave his body in a slow, tingling rush. Gavin lowers himself down onto all fours, arranging himself on top of Richard, caging him in. It’s good. It’s exactly what he wants, weight and pressure and Gavin’s dark, mean eyes that for some reason don’t feel so mean when they’re this close to Richard’s own. Gavin really is an unfairly good kisser.  
  
Gavin presses his whole body down on him and Richard moans into his mouth. Gavin lets his weight down, more and more, until all Richard can feel is the heat of their bodies, still fully clothed, against each other, holding him down. Grounding him. Gavin fucking read him like a magazine. Gavin fucking knows him. He hates this.  
  
“Shit,” he says instead of any of this, “I want,” and Gavin shifts a knee in between his legs, presses down with one of his solid quads, and Richard hisses.  
  
“Yeah,” says Gavin in reply, a non-response, and kisses him again.  
  
It’s hot and hard and Richard wants more more more, can barely breathe for it.   
  
Gavin undoes Richard’s belt and then his own and tosses them away, the buckles clattering on the floor, and Richard moans into his mouth remembering the welts they’d left the one time they fucked around with that. Gavin traps the sound, passes it back with a little grunt as he works Richard’s pants open, and then they’re gone, down his legs leaving him just in boxers and his stupid shirts.  
  
“I do,” Richard says, “have a teacher thing now.”  
  
Gavin laughs. Smacks him across the face, but it’s soft, a playful gesture. Richard sucks in a breath anyway and undoes the buttons of his own shirt with fumbling fingers. Gavin helps divest him of it, yanks his undershirt over his head. Runs both hands, reverent, down Richard’s torso.  
  
“You are so goddamn beautiful,” Gavin says vacantly. Pinches his nipples, scrapes down his chest. “I love your body, Jesus, Richard. You have no idea.”  
  
Richard has _some_ idea, just from the way Gavin’s looking at him, but he doesn’t answer or want to think much about it. He averts his eyes and starts fumbling with Gavin’s shirt buttons instead. “I want you,” he says, instead of anything intelligible.  
  
Gavin lets out a ragged breath and bats his hands away, makes short work of his t-shirt. Pants, two sets of boxers come off before Richard can breathe again, and he can practically feel the tension in the air popping, the cabin pressure returning to normal as Gavin climbs back onto the bed. “Fours,” Gavin says, and Richard gets on all fours. “Don’t move."  
  
Richard doesn't argue or fight back, just stutters a moan into the sheets as Gavin spreads him open and dives in. He allows it, accepts it, shivers and bucks up into Gavin's mouth, against his tongue. Gavin licks him eagerly and sloppily, showing no restraint, all hot breath and a firm grip on his ass and inner thighs to hold him up from the mattress. He has no idea how Gavin Belson got so good at eating ass. There's no reason why he should be. He hates him for it and yet.

Gavin surfaces, his breath coming out in short, winded-sounding pants. "I need to fuck you, Richard," he says sharply. "Would you like me to —“

"God, yeah," Richard says, a little embarrassed by the desperation in his own voice as he reaches down to fist his own neglected cock. He pumps it a couple times, already fully erect, and then sits up, flopping onto his back. Grapples from the lube Gavin had conveniently tossed on the bedside table and preps himself the rest of the way. Gavin's not exactly big, so two fingers has always done the trick. Leaves him tight enough for it to feel kind of intense at first. Richard is already a little bit loose and wet from the attention he's already been paid; not enough, but it’s a start. He wastes no time, driving himself down onto his fingers again and again, letting Gavin watch with hungry eyes as he sits back, stroking his own cock, teeth sunk into his bottom lip.

"Shit, you look good," Gavin says, his voice pinched and tight, slicking up his cock with a handful of lube. "Shit. Richard —“

He's on top of Richard before either of them can get another sentence out, straddling him and lining his cock up against Richard's hole before insistently pressing inside. It's strangely silent before Gavin's lips find his mouth in a rough, bossy kiss, and Richard hooks his legs around Gavin's back, pulling him deeper, practically begging for more.

Gavin fucks him without overthinking it. Presses his hands to the bedsheets as he bottoms out inside him. His lips are close to Richard’s ear, breath hot and making him squirm. Ticklish. Richard tosses his head away and their foreheads crack together and they laugh. It’s horribly intimate and Gavin takes the opportunity to pin his hands tighter and fuck him harder, and Richard’s eyes close on their own as he hears the steady beat of breath in his ear.  
  
Gavin grabs him, flips him over. Richard lets him, executive functioning entirely not his own. Gavin has weird control issues about everything and Richard has weird Episcopalian shame about sex and together, they just fit. He presses his forehead into the hotel bedspread, rubs his face mindlessly against the sheets as Gavin drapes himself over his body.  
  
“Oh my God,” he hears himself saying, “harder, please, need it harder.”  
  
Gavin stops, pulls out, readjusts. Richard gasps at the loss of him, then harder as Gavin drives back in, one single thrust that drives the air from his chest at the same time. “Harder?” he growls, deep against his ear, and Richard gasps. “Is this how you want to get fucked?”  
  
Richard buries his face in the crook of his elbow, answers with a wordless moan, pushing his hips further up off the bed to let Gavin get a hand around him. It takes thirty seconds, Gavin’s pace relentless outside him, grip firm around him, and then Richard hears himself cry out from the bottom of his throat as everything goes white and blissful. Gavin doesn’t stop — Gavin’s too close — Gavin keeps fucking him, ten, maybe fifteen more seconds. “Love you,” Gavin growls in his ear, and Richard clenches around him, and then it’s all over.  
  
They give it a few minutes. Gavin throws him a washcloth from the bathroom. Richard cleans himself up as best he can. Thinks about showering, but his body feels worn, wrung-out. Not worth it. He stays there as Gavin putters around the suite. Gavin stretches, works himself into warrior pose. Richard watches in vague interest, eyes charting the curve of his musculature, the flexible lines, wondering how deliberate the look of his body must be. He’s got the look of a man who pretends not to care too much about how he looks; six feet without an ounce of flab. Kind of surprising, but maybe not really. Richard licks his lips. Gilfoyle’s got, like, an eight pack under his stupid t-shirts. Richard wonders what Gavin’s body looked like fifteen years ago.  
  
Gavin comes back to bed, hauls the sheets over both of them. Kisses Richard on the temple and settles onto his back beside him. Richard can’t tear his eyes away from the ceiling. Gavin isn’t looking at him. He’s got his head turned the other way. One calf hooked over Richard’s leg, but otherwise they’re barely touching.  
  
“It’s okay,” Richard says after a long moment, “if you meant it.”  
  
Gavin turns his head. Looks him in the eye. “Of course I meant it.”  
  
“I.” Richard says, but he doesn’t have a follow-up. Instead he says, “My dad almost died last year.”  
  
“Oh,” says Gavin in response. He sounds truly taken aback, and furrows his brow. “Was it…”  
  
“Heart attack. While he was at work,” Richard says. “Like, his office isn’t far from the hospital, so it worked out, but it was scary.” He thinks about it for a moment, and says, “Remember that Oceana fundraiser last year?”  
  
“Of course. They silent-auctioned a scuba trip to cage-dive with sharks and Hanneman outbid me at the very last moment,” Gavin says. “He doesn’t even have a scuba license. Ridiculous.”  
  
“Anyway, it was that weekend,” Richard says, and Gavin sighs heavily, places his head in his hands.  
  
“I didn’t know that. I was angry at you for disappearing and not even letting me know you weren’t going to come. I had the seating charts rearranged when I saw that you were on the guest list, and ended up having to spend the entire night sitting beside Mr. Bachmann.” Gavin sighs again and looks up, and he hooks his foot around Richard’s calf, rubbing him affectionately with his toes. “I’m sorry. I had no idea.”  
  
“No, it’s fine, like, I didn’t tell you for a reason,” Richard says. He pinches the bridge of his nose in frustration and exhales. “I don’t even know what the reason was, honestly. I wanted a reason to be mad at you, like, for not intuitively knowing that something was wrong. I guess the point here is that I’m just not good at, like, communicating? About anything, really, you know that, but especially not about how I feel.”  
  
To his credit, like, to way more credit than Richard has ever thought to give him, Gavin doesn’t say any of the things he could say. He shifts a little closer to Richard, gives him time to move away, but Richard just — he doesn’t. He stays put. This close, Gavin smells like nothing but himself, just warm skin and haunting sandy depth and that stupid Kiehl’s hairstyling cream he uses every fucking day. Smelling him is like staring at the surface of a lake. Skipping rocks. Waiting for something awful, some kind of Lovecraftian horror to come reeling up from the water.  
  
“I don’t know,” Richard says again. “What do we do if I say it?”  
  
This time Gavin chuckles. “What do you mean, ‘what do we do?’ We move the fuck on under a revised working agreement on the terms of the relationship. Have you never actually — oh, Jesus, you haven’t.”  
  
If Richard still had it in him to be nauseous after the night he’s had, he would be, but instead he just feels fucking numb. He closes his eyes, shakes his head slowly. “It’s just never, I mean,” he says, speaking too quickly. His tongue is clumsy, inelegant, in his defensiveness. “High school wasn’t — and then college just kind of, like, that ended, and I dated people but then Pied Piper kind of took over my life and then, like, you.” He tries to gesture evocatively, but manages to catch Gavin in the side instead. “Sorry. But yeah, I mean, I guess that’s the point, I just — I didn’t think…”  
  
He trails off into a sort of verbal shrug, and Gavin sighs, propping himself up on his elbows to actually look at him.  
  
“You feel bad for me,” Richard predicts, and Gavin shakes his head.  
  
“Never,” he says, and Richard rolls his eyes.  
  
“Yeah, well,” Richard says. “I just think you’re stupid. Like, tell me what the fuck you want me to say instead of just waiting around for me to stumble into it sideways and not even know how I got there.”  
  
Gavin raises an eyebrow.  
  
"So," Richard says again. "This is gonna —" And here he breaks off. It would be easier to know how to say what he means if he knew what he fucking wanted. 

"Things don't necessarily need to change," Gavin says quietly. "You like how things are. So do I. Deciding to put words to that doesn't immediately mean we need to get married."

For fuck's sake. The word _married_ sends a cold electric shock down his spine, and Richard shuts his eyes, breathes in slowly to keep from hyperventilating. This is too much, it's too fucking much, and frankly the thing that's getting him is that Gavin doesn't have an excuse, really, for saying any of this. It's not a PR statement or a Twitter rant; he's not trying to win over Richard's parents or investors or anyone, really, except for Richard himself. He can't be serious. That's what's killing him. Gavin can't possibly be serious about all of this. Except that he is, and that he's sitting there looking at Richard like this is the most obvious, natural next step in the world, and Richard is still completely —

Maybe Gavin's not as oblivious as he seems, because he finally picks up on the tension, laying a hand on Richard's and saying, "Or we can talk about it later." He pauses. "I stand by everything I've said, though."

"Mm," says Richard, desperate for some other form of diversion, distraction, to keep this from being the silence that settles between them. "I — yeah. I know." 

It wouldn't be that hard to just say it, either. They're just words. All he has to do is agree, and Gavin will be happier for it, and that's why he agreed to this whole fucking trip, anyway, to make Gavin happy. And on some level, Richard thinks, it can't be that wrong. It might be there inside him already, lurking undetected like a cancer. Stage three. Heart cancer. He pictures a doctor in a white coat delivering the news solemnly and almost giggles. It wouldn't hurt him to lie here.

But the letters. He's not going to tell Gavin about the letters.

He flops back down in bed, and Gavin arranges himself silently around him, curling up on his side as Richard gets comfortable flat on his back, pulls clean white hotel sheets nearly up to his chin. Gavin reaches up, flips off the bedside lamp.

In the dark, it's easier to say things he shouldn't. He steels himself. Turns onto his own left side, entwining his body with Gavin's. When they're good and tangled under the sheets, Richard takes a breath and says against his neck, "Yeah, I, uh."

"Hm?" Gavin sounds tired, but eager. "Richard?"

He closes his eyes against the darkness anyway and pushes his face further into Gavin's throat. When he says it, his lips brush neck and collarbone. 

"What was that?" Gavin doesn't sound caught off-guard. He sounds unsurprised, but warm, and that hot-boiling-jello feeling returns to Richard's stomach. He grinds his jaw and pulls away to brush his lips against Gavin's ear.

"I said I love you too," he mutters, inarticulate and tired, and again to his credit Gavin doesn't get smug, doesn't laugh, doesn't probe him for more. Richard shuts his eyes tighter and his leaden head drops back to the pillows, and as he's pulling away to shift onto his back again, he feels Gavin's lips press softly into his own.

"Good," Gavin says, and he doesn't say anything else after that, and Richard succumbs to the heaviness of sleep moments after.


	5. The Giving Tree

They fly back to San Jose the next morning, having both agreed that there is not enough in Tulsa to keep them there for an extra ten or twelve hours, and Richard doesn't linger after they've disembarked from the jet. He kisses a hesitant Gavin on the lips and mumbles something about work to do. He knows how it'll go if he goes back to Gavin's: Gavin will make him a smoothie, shove too much kale in it even though Richard complains about the bitterness. He'll ignore Richard long enough for him to get comfortable, then come in pretending not to care what Richard is doing but quietly insinuating himself in his space anyway. They'll just exist together for a while in casual silence, or else they'll lose themselves in some kind of debate, and then Richard will start feeling that weird, hot, prickly-all-over way again. 

Gavin barely reacts when Richard tells him he's going back to the incubator, which is almost off-putting in its own way. "That's fine," he says instead, changing lanes immediately, as though he knows the way to Richard's by heart. "I may have to squeeze in a meeting, anyway."

"It's Labor Day," Richard says, and Gavin shrugs.

"Be that as it may, our trip out of the fishbowl didn't actually do much to beat back these more pressing concerns about who's been leaking my private information to the press," Gavin says. "My PIs say they might be on to something. I'll keep you updated."

"Please." Richard pauses, then says, "I'll call you."

"Yes." Gavin stops at a red light. "By the way, I forgot to tell you. My trip to Los Angeles from last week has been pushed up. I'll be gone Thursday and Friday."

"Two days?" asks Richard. "It's a two-hour flight."

Gavin gives him an odd little look at that. "I have a place down there. I thought I might stay an extra day and grab a round of drinks with Aaron Sorkin. He suggested we touch base before he starts the next draft of the screenplay, given recent events..."

"Oh," Richard can't resist saying. "Does he know about your affinity for Studio 60?"

Gavin rolls his eyes. "I see you found my Netflix queue. Frankly, of his later-period work, I prefer The Newsroom, but —"

"You _would_ like The Newsroom," Richard groans, just as Gavin pulls up in front of the incubator and pops the trunk, shaking his head, put-upon and faux-annoyed.

"Get out," he says. "Call me."

"Will do," says Richard, praying for a seamless transition. Instead, Gavin rolls down the passenger-side window as Richard shuts the door. 

"If I don't see you before Friday," he says, "I'll see you this weekend." Gavin pauses meaningfully, as if he's waiting for Richard to say it first. Well, he'll have to keep waiting, Richard thinks, as he swings his laptop bag over his shoulder and nods. Heads around back to the trunk to grab his duffel.

It's Labor Day, and so Richard isn't expecting to come home to much. Maybe Erlich smoking a bong out by the pool, maybe Jian Yang eating Froot Loops out of the box while hunched over in the kitchen. Instead, he drops his bag on the living room floor and jumps, startled, at the sight that greets him.

"Hello, Richard," Jared says cheerfully, and Richard exhales heavily, wiping his brow with the back of his hand for no real reason.

"Hey. Uh, hey, Jared." Jared's sitting there placidly, laptop beside him but not even open, and it makes Richard do a double take. "Were you — you weren't waiting for me, were you?"

"I heard you pull up outside," Jared says. "How was your flight? Have you eaten? Are you feeling all right?"

"Yeah, I'm fine," Richard says. He sets his laptop bag aside, still preoccupied, and heads to the kitchen. That bottle of wine the night before had been a bad idea — he didn't even get drunk on it, really, but his head feels thick and his stomach is a little unsettled anyway. Coconut water in the fridge. He takes one, cracks the plastic seal and takes a sip. He'll never understand how people drink this shit, how the health lobby has somehow convinced an entire country that coconut water doesn't just taste like hot gym socks. Grimacing, he comes back to the living room, sits down beside Jared on the couch. "What's up? It's Labor Day, I mean, you shouldn't be here."

"Oh, it's all right," Jared says, and folds his hands in his lap, adjusting his posture like he's about to deliver some Bad News. "I actually had something I wanted to talk to you about."

Richard pauses, coconut water halfway to his mouth. "Is it the problem with the file transfers? I thought we resolved that on Saturday. You guys could've g-chatted me if —"

"No, no, it's not that," Jared says politely. "Actually, it's — well, I guess there's no easy way to put this. Friday was just a bit of a challenge, and I thought we might touch base before the work week picks back up."

Richard's lungs deflate. "Jared, God, I am so sorry," he mutters, his entire body curling in on itself as he rests his forehead in his hands. Presses the heels of his palms into his eye sockets until he sees kaleidoscopic constellations. "I never should have left, you guys must have been slammed, God, we go to beta in a week —"

"No, really, the platform wasn't the issue," Jared presses, and Richard looks up at him through spread fingers, chewing the inside of his cheek. "I just — Erlich and I were a bit slammed on Friday. The CodeRag piece and all, about you."

"Oh," says Richard, and then, "Fuck."

"It's not — I mean, of course, we appreciated having the advanced notice, we appreciated your telling us before and not having to find out the way the rest of the Valley did," Jared says. "But it was just a lot of attention, and Erlich and I spent most of the day fending off phone calls about a relationship that frankly, we don't know anything about."

"God, Jared, I am so sorry," Richard says again. He means it, too, hates himself with every self-loathing shred in his body for not thinking about this. Too sick with nausea to finish his coconut water, which would be practically undrinkable even if he could drink anything. "I honestly — I shouldn't have disappeared on you like that, Jesus. I'm so sorry."

"No, it's all right," Jared says gingerly, in the way Richard recognizes to indicate that it isn't all right at all. "We're just, you know, a little overwhelmed."

"Yeah. Yeah, I get it," Richard murmurs. "I mean, for what it's worth, leaving didn't help. We spent two days in Jackson Hole and then left for Tulsa after Jack Barker showed up on our porch at eight in the morning."

"Tulsa?" Jared frowns. "What's in Tulsa, other than your parents?"

"Nothing. We went to see my parents.

"Are they all right? Did something happen?"

Richard buries his face in his palms again. "Gavin happened," he groans through his flesh, and then parts his hands. "It was his idea. He's on this kick about the two of us needing to be, I don't know, a real couple or whatever."

"Because of the outing? I assume this follows the press release Hooli's team put out about Gavin's little Twitter escapade," says Jared, and Richard frowns.

"I didn't know... he didn't say anything about a press release." Shakes his head. "What'd it say?"

"Just that you two were in a committed relationship and that Gavin was very upset by the press trying to exploit his private life for ad clicks," Jared shrugs. "I assumed it was — you know. You said it yourself, it's all about the optics with him."

Richard shakes his head again, like a wet dog. Bewildered. "I mean, yeah, but — Jesus, when did that come out?"

"About an hour after the Twitter situation started," Jared frowns. "I assumed you would have known by now. Going to Tulsa, I mean, that seems to follow a certain arc."

The elevator-plummeting feeling of having been played hits him out of nowhere, and Richard freezes. Fuck Gavin. Fuck him. Fuck him for dropping that word, and for making him say it back, guilting him into it — fuck him for bringing the family into it, for letting Richard divulge so much, just letting him keep talking while saying nothing of his own. He plants his feet in the carpet, jumps up to pace the living room floor while Jared, cherubic and cream-faced in his white polo, watches with evident confusion.

"Richard, are you —"

"He told me he loved me," Richard groans. "In Tulsa. First in front of my parents and then, like, for real. He didn't even say it like that, though, he just said 'the universe makes you find love in unexpected places,' or something like that, and then he just —" Richard stifles a small screech. _Fuck._ He understands the appeal of a screaming solarium now. He makes do with one of the couch cushions instead.

"Listen," he says after a few moments of Jared looking at him with polite concern. "I'm gonna go for a drive, okay? And then, like, let's deal with this in an hour. It'll be fine, I just need some time to process."

Jared doesn't bat an eye. "Of course," he says. "Take as much time as you need. Give me a call. Erlich is, I believe, at an all-day barbecue thrown by someone he knows from Burning Man. He said there was a swimming pool and ayahuasca, I didn't press him for details. If you'd like I can see if he'll text you the address —"

"No, not necessary," Richard says. "Look — I really appreciate it, okay? Everything."

Jared places a tentative hand on his shoulder, and Richard glances up to meet his penetrating look. "I'm overjoyed that you seem to have found happiness," he says. "But being that it's with someone who embodies, to me, the wholesale spirit of the soulless corporate prison you stand antithetical to, I just hope you understand that I have to take a backseat here. I —"

"Jared, look, it's not. Not that."

"I wish you well," he finishes, and squeezes down. Richard chances a small smile. Jared returns it, but just barely. "I wish _you_ well," he says again, and that's that.

 

* * *

 

Richard goes for a drive. He doesn't call Gavin.

Richard comes home, plugs away steadily for several hours on work he should have finished on Friday. He doesn't call Gavin.

It's not that he's angry. He doesn't know what he expected. Of course Gavin would have played him like this — just following a script, doing what he always does. Fool me once, shame on you; let Gavin Belson fool you once, what the hell did you expect? He's so glad he didn't mean what he said. So fucking glad that was just a conciliatory gesture toward an embittered, combative old dick. He didn't mean it at all.

Except: Richard's a logical man. He respects evidence as much as emotion, he likes the idea of having an empirical case. He digs around in his room and finds a vape pen from that period a few months ago when his doctor sold him on weed to calm the roiling tide of anxiety underneath his exterior. Before he took notice of the equally grounding properties of occasional spankings instead. (He told the doctor it just made him paranoid. The truth is, he's just never really liked it.)

The incubator's still quiet, but for Jian Yang skittering around from room to room inside, but Richard goes out to the pool instead and tucks himself into a deck chair, watching the placid water as the sun sinks down over the neighborhood. The oil in the pen cartridge is pineapple flavored, because he thought that sounded fun in the moment. It's fine. He takes a couple hits, holds it in until he chokes a little. It's — fine.

He likes the idea of an empirical case against Gavin and his bullshit, so he starts from the beginning, recounting the events to himself as he watches the pool water ripple in the light evening breeze.

The arbitration. It started at the arbitration if not the physical entanglement itself, then at least the promise of it. Then the hate sex. Feverish, yet scheduled, once a week at first. Then more frequently. Always at Gavin's. Except for the one time at the Hooli campus, in the blackout — otherwise, always at Gavin's. Then the tenderness — at what point did that start to creep in? He doesn't even fucking remember anymore. 

He concentrates, and really tries, to remember the first time Gavin was nice to him. He thinks he remembers something early on, something about sleeping pills and letting him stay over. The walk of shame had been panic-inducing but Gavin had woken him up almost gently the next morning. He's like the archetypal frog in the pot: can't remember when the fuck it started boiling. All he remembers is Gavin's touch growing more gentle after they've both come; Gavin's kisses growing longer, deeper, and Richard growing more desperate, feeling like he wanted to crawl out of his skin if he couldn't taste all of Gavin in that moment. His smell, and getting used to it. The way his hands hold him down, fit perfectly inside him, all the way up to four fingers that one time — Richard shuts his eyes and tries not to think about that. 

He thinks about a night in May, when Gavin had sent him a calendar invite to come over even though it wasn't a Friday. He'd gone, though not without light complaint, all for show. Gavin had met him swimming laps in his own pool, convinced him to shuck his own clothing right there and jump in.

"This is stupid," Richard pouted, but he took his pants off, then his shirt. Gavin clocked him as he hesitated over his boxers. "Come on. You have swim trunks."

"They're all the way in the house, and it's just us," Gavin said, treading water in the eight-foot end, hair wet and dark eyes glinting, and Richard heaved a sigh but stripped and slid into the cover of the water before Gavin could get too good a look.

Gavin kissed him. Gavin tasted like the saltwater pool and pulled Richard close to him despite the resistance of the water. Richard let him, kissed back, amused and hungry. He paddled to the side, floated on his back in the shallows while Gavin dutifully breaststroked a couple more times back and forth lengthwise. 

Gavin ducked under and dove to the bottom, swam close to the floor like a hammerhead. Richard ignored him until he popped up right beside him, startling Richard with a little splash.

"Jesus, you're like the stingray that killed Steve Irwin."

"That ray was frightened and acting in self-defense," Gavin said. "You would have done the same."

Richard rolled his eyes. He let himself be kissed and he returned it after a couple moments of pointed, melodramatic inaction. Gavin tugged him toward the ladder and grinned as he pulled away. "Hungry?"

"Not really," Richard said, and Gavin nipped at his jaw and growled, "I am."

Gavin figured out early on that with enough work and attention and stamina on his end, he could usually make Richard come twice in a night. Gavin kissed his hipbones and swirled his tongue in circles over his nipples and sucked on his collarbones and made Richard squirm, aching, rock hard before either of them laid a hand on his cock. Gavin took a long time to fuck him that night, spent ages on a languid, expert blowjob and then just kept working him up, fucking him with his tongue and then fingers, deliberately. He took his time. He got a hand around Richard's soft cock and stroked, a couple times, and Richard whined from the back of his throat and Gavin just smiled…

Richard sighs. Takes another hit of the pen. Yeah, okay, the sex has always been good. He would never describe himself as a particularly visual man — the visuals were fine, but it's part of why porn lost its allure a few years after the novelty wore off. The other sensory components — touch, smell, sound, taste — make up, like, four-fifths of his sexual attraction. Which means it all matters: Gavin's strong, soft hands pressing him down into the mattress, his smell (dry cleaning, hair product, green tea), his planes of skin salty from the pool, the open responsive noises he makes when Richard touches him. They're all there. They all count, like, way more than they should. 

Gavin looks at him like he's something exasperating and tremendous all at the same time. Gavin says dumb shit all the time and doesn't get pissed when Richard corrects him like a true pedant, just argues until one of them concedes the point. Gavin revels in taking apart his brain just to see how it works, and vice versa. Gavin has seen him melt down, stress-vomit, cry during sex, and have panic attacks, and he's still there. 

He came into this looking for a way out, an escape hatch. Richard coughs a little and rests his head back on the tall back of the chair. He doesn't know why he doesn't do this all the time. It's as if he's finally managed to untangle the string of Christmas lights that make up his dilemma.

Gavin loves him. For whatever weird, half-baked, ill-thought-out reason, Richard chooses to believe he's telling the truth. Besides, Gavin has no poker face; if this were about following a press release, or whatever, Richard would have figured that out in two minutes flat. Gavin is exhausting but remarkably open. He's vengeful and narcissistic but cares deeply about the things he chooses to care about. And besides, Richard just — he _chose_ Gavin, a year ago, without even really thinking twice about it. For whatever fucked-up reasons of his own. Because of the way his skin tastes or how his voice is lower and rougher in the mornings than other times, or his stupid haircut that everyone at Hooli circulated a meme comparing it to Kim Jong-Un's that one time but that Richard kind of loves to dig his fingers into and knock it all out of place. Because he gets the sense, after a week fighting with CodeRag and the intruding forces of the outside world, that they really are much stronger as a team than they ever were as enemies, and having Gavin Belson as an enemy was ultimately just too exhausting to remain viable for much longer.

"Fuck," he mutters. He needs to stop thinking about this.

  
The week, however improbably, flies by. With the massive amount of work on his plate and the video chat app scheduled to enter beta testing on Friday, Richard barely manages finding time to eat and sleep, let alone think about Gavin. Gavin doesn't call him. He gets a text on Wednesday, a tired-seeming dispatch reaffirming that he'd be out of town Thursday and Friday; Richard texts back a tentative "Have fun," and dwells on the issue of which emoji to append for a full minute before remembering that not only was the Hooli phone's emoji keyboard incompatible with Apple's, but that Gavin, who still typed out his rare emoticon use with colons and parentheses, was hardly an audience worth the deeper thought. (And furthermore, Richard thought, acting like a fucking seventeen-year-old girl while agonizing over what emojis to text his 50-year-old boyfriend is a step beyond pathetic, even for himself.)

He eats okay. He sleeps fine. He wakes up tense and sweaty, but not more so than before the first time he'd slept in Gavin's climate-optimized bedroom with his egregiously expensive sheets. Everything's going fine, and there's really nothing to overthink. It's fine.

He's dicking around on the internet on Thursday afternoon. There's so little else he has to do — just waiting for a phone call of approval from Monica, acknowledging the beta's ready to drop. He's reading the blogs again, even though everyone's telling him not to. The itch in his brain won't let up, though. He scans page after page on TechCrunch, Wired, Gizmodo, theVerge, just looking for a mention of his own name in bold text. Nominally, he's looking for Pied Piper coverage. In reality... well, he knows who he is. He knows what he's about. It's fine.

Everything's fine.

Everything actually is settling back to fine online, oddly, which Richard can't be too upset about. The upside to the internet's notoriously short attention span is that without regular updates, people forget so quickly. Which is something he's bemoaned when it comes to the nature of the business, the ephemeral nature of trying to actually make something. But here? It's not the worst condition under which to try to slip back under the radar.

It's data. It's always been about data. 

When he conceptualizes it as such, it makes perfect sense.

Data relevance has a shelf life. The relevance of expository blog posts, he thinks, must have a shorter shelf life than most; he thinks about it in terms of TV. Because he's never watched Breaking Bad twice. Once the plot twist happens, you're spoiled for it. It's hardly as if C.J. Cantwell's writing is worth revisiting for the quality of her prose. He can see the analytics in his mind as clear as day, the spike of hits over the first 12 hours and the sharp drop-off to a nonexistent trickle of viewers ever since. It's as comforting as the relative silence.

So Richard breathes. He takes it upon himself to calm down, and he even unlocks his Twitter account after a few days. The vitriolic tweets have somewhat dropped off, and in its place, blessed calm — and replies from nosy startup types aiming for an invite to the new app's beta, but, well, no such thing as perfect.

"Fuck my cock," says Dinesh across the table, and then, the worst thing he could possibly say outside of _I just deleted the entire contents of my hard drive_ , "go check ValleyHound. Gavin Belson just went fucking postal."

Possibilities pound through his veins. He dry heaves a little, even before he can manage to type more than _v-a-l_ into the Chrome search bar. Everyone in the room is deeply fixated on their own screens — except for Jared, Richard notices. Jared is looking at him. Jared looks petrified, but he's looking at Richard.

 

* * *

 

 ****_**EXCLUSIVE: LEAKED VOICEMAIL FROM GAVIN BELSON**  
_ _By C.J. Cantwell  
_ _Filed under: EXCLUSIVE, GAVIN BELSON, RICHARD HENDRICKS, GAVINGATE_

_It's been a hell of a first week. Last Friday, I said farewell to CodeRag and the Hooli oversight committee, and the rest of the staff and I set out for greener pastures on our own. It may have taken six days, but Gavin Belson has finally issued comment — breaking a vow of silence that has persisted since his Twitter rant over Labor Day weekend._

_Belson left this voicemail on our company phone last night, and let's just say, it's a barn-burner. But before you listen, some food for thought: does anyone else think his obvious love for Richard Hendricks, his 28-year-old startup CEO boyfriend, is almost, well, sweet? Practically humanizing. After all, the part in the voicemail where Belson vows to "disembowel and tear limb from limb the source responsible for outing Richard" as well as "the thoughtless, craven, pudding-spined clitoris of an editor who allowed that story to go to print" if we chose not to reveal our sources... it's almost romantic, in the right light. After all, it's not every day that an eccentric, megalomaniacal billionaire falls in love with such a thoroughly ordinary guy._

_Unfortunately, Hendricks isn't_ that _ordinary. His company, Pied Piper, is about to begin invitation-only beta testing on a new video chat app rumored to run twice as quickly and with fewer lags and faster peer-to-peer file sharing than Hooli Chat and Google Hangouts. By all definitions, Hendricks is a public figure. Which means — what, exactly?_

_Well, for starters, his personal life is of interest to the public good. If it arguably wasn't before the public knew about his entanglement with Belson, it remains so as long as Belson continues to wage war against the freedom of the press on his behalf. But at the same time, we have wonder if this whole kerfuffle really has more to do with Belson's legendarily easily-bruised ego than it does Hendricks' privacy. After all, the more we talk about Hendricks, the more eyes will be on Hendricks’ app as soon as it goes live to the public._

_But Belson — well, he's never been one to shy away from the spotlight until now. Which means one of two things: either falling for the allegedly awkward and publicity-shy Hendricks has made him do a sharp 180 on the matter, or he just doesn't like the content we've been publishing._

_If you can't stand the heat, Gavin, stay out of the Valley._

**_CLICK TO HEAR THE LEAKED VOICEMAILS._ **

 

* * *

  
  
"Hey," says Jared. "Are you feeling okay? I don't want to intrude."

A few hours later, Richard has finally gathered the energy to push through the mortification and lift his head off the loft bed to peer down at Jared, his face tilted only slightly upward to look curiously at Richard. "C'mere," he says, patting the mattress next to him, and Jared scales the ladder tentatively, ducking his head down to avoid knocking it on the ceiling. He sits on the mattress, gangly legs dangling off the edge, and he looks at Richard, pure commiseration.

"Don't," Richard says as Jared opens his mouth. "I know. I mean, I literally know, I've thought about every single thing you're gonna say, okay? Literally that's just been the past few days. I've parsed my attraction to that fucking nightmare pretty much non-stop and I don't have any more answers than you do, but I don't think — what?"

He notices Jared look at him with vague uncertainty, a faltering in his normally intense stare. Jared licks his lips, folds his hands. Fakes a smile.

"I think you should know," he says softly, "that I think Erlich and I worked out the source Gavin's so upset about."

Richard sits up at this, rockets up onto his elbows with his pulse hammering in his throat. "Who?" he demands, shaking his head. "And, like. How? But mostly — whom?"

Jared heaves a sigh. "This isn't one hundred percent a certainty," he says. "But we think it's Bighead."

Richard blinks, as he often does when confronted with some nugget of information he needs time to mine and process. Bighead. Not — his Bighead. Not on purpose. Couldn't be. Bighead doesn't have a petty bone in his body. He wouldn't know vengeance if it poured itself, green and slimy like ectoplasm, into his Big Gulp and called itself a slurpee. If Bighead is, in fact, one of the sources, there's no way it could be through anything but sheer incompetence.

"Are you sure?" he asks Jared after a moment, and Jared nods. "Because, I mean, there are a lot of things Bighead could have done that might make him look suspicious about this? Like, I realized he wasn't in the office much this week, but I figured it was an investors thing, he was out courting people with Erlich or whatever —"

"Actually, it was Erlich who picked up on it during one of those meetings," Jared says. "Someone mentioned the snafu with Gavin, and Bighead seemed very agitated. From what I could gather, he looked a bit like my social worker when the prosecutor asked what she did with all those files. He seemed rather embarrassed and changed the subject." Jared tilts his head sideways, thinking. "I mean, it's not a sure thing. He denied having anything to do with it when we brought it up, but we just needed to know, in case Gavin makes good on his legal threats."

Richard exhales heavily, shaking his head. “If it is, we need to be sure.”  
  
“I’ll ask,” Jared volunteers, but Richard shakes his head harder, more emphatically.  
  
“No. It needs to be me. He already probably feels like he fucked up,” Richard says slowly. “I mean, I don’t love the whole thing either, but I don’t want Gavin to just be circling the wagons getting more and more pissed off. If there’s something I can do, I mean, I’m gonna do it. To mitigate the fallout or whatever.”  
  
“Richard…” Jared looks at him oddly. Tenderly, but with a different sort of tenderness. It looks like something close to pity, too close for Richard’s comfort, and he bristles at it before he thinks twice. This is just how Jared is. He doesn’t mean to condescend. It’s not like that.  
  
“What,” says Richard plainly, and Jared sighs.  
  
“I don’t want to pry,” he says primly, and Richard lets out a breath like a roll of thunder. Jared doesn’t seem to notice, or if he does, he chooses to ignore it — likely the latter. “I just don’t really understand.”  
  
“Really? What’s not to understand?” If Richard sounds a little testy, he doesn’t mean it. Except — it’s not Jared’s place. He doesn’t mean to be testy, but Jared doesn’t have to sound so appalled. He doesn’t mean to be testy, but Jared’s not his parent, either. Even his own fucking dad could at least put on a more positive attitude about this.  
  
“I just…” Jared pauses, and then something in him just breaks. It’s like watching a building implode in slow motion, the long tumbling crumble of the facade before it all goes to pieces. “You’re such a good person, Richard, and Gavin just — isn’t. I don’t worry for _you,_ but I worry what he’ll do to your character. I just really wanted to believe that this was some sort of rumor, or something minor being made out to be much bigger than it is.”  
  
Richard says nothing. He props his head on one of his hands and looks at Jared, placid, impassive. He wants to feel hurt by this — fuck, he’d settle for feeling _something_. Nothing changes. Nothing moves.  
  
“I just — I want to be supportive, Richard, honestly,” Jared says slowly. “But I can only do that insofar as you’re concerned. Follow your bliss, you know. Joseph Campbell. But I can’t — I can’t be happy for Gavin, other than in that he makes _you_ happy.”  
  
He wants to sigh, but he doesn’t sigh, or express any emotion at all, really. He can sense, somehow, that it’d be a bad idea. Jared. Fucking Jared. It’s not like he hasn’t — not like he wouldn’t — he wonders, sometimes, how it would be if they lined up like that. If they could have ever managed to look each other in the eye and admit what they wanted when the timelines matched up. They were on different schedules, that’s all.  
  
He thinks it’s not the worst thing that could happen. Him and Jared.  
  
It’s stupid and it’s selfish and he knows this, but somehow, nothing’s stopping him as he pushes himself up the rest of the way, to sit up closer to Jared. He sits there, leans forward, waiting for something. Waiting for he doesn’t know what. Some kind of sigh, a move signifying some sort of reciprocative nature. He looks at Jared’s lips. Testing. Waiting.  
  
It’s stupid. It’s selfish. Jared glances away, and then scoots half an inch away from Richard.  
  
“Anyway,” says Jared. “I just — I thought I should tell you.”  
  
Richard exhales. He pulls himself out of whatever the fuck that was. Lies back down and stares at the ceiling, before closing his eyes and trying his best to just fucking disengage.  
  
He feels Jared flop down onto the mattress, and then hears, in a small voice, “Is there anything in particular that you could tell me, to perhaps contextualize this for me?”  
  
“It’s hard to explain,” Richard says, eyes still shut.  
  
“Tell me,” says Jared, and Richard thinks it over.  
  
“I just — we chose each other,” he says. Almost apologetic. He doesn’t _need_ to apologize, he knows that intrinsically, but he does it. Because he _is_ apologetic, he _is_ sorry. He just wants Jared to understand. He doesn’t want to have to say it. He wants it to go unsaid. He wants so many things he can’t have.  
  
When Richard finally finds the words to put to it, he's almost afraid that Jared has moved on, lost interest. But Jared's still there, and Richard knows — kind of — what he wants to say. 

"You know how when you're a kid and you think that you're gonna fall in love and it's gonna be totally romantic and obvious to everyone around you?"

"Yes," Jared says, and it's genuine and earnest and Richard hates himself.

"I mean, so did I, and I just — I mean, you know how bad I am with women, and like, with everyone? I can't move things forward. I move way too fucking fast and freak out over insignificant things and it doesn't last long and anyway, the amount of effort it took to date anyone was insane? Like, the barrier to entry was just too high in the first place. I didn't have the time. And this whole thing with Gavin just kind of started as its own thing. Like, casual hate sex, stress relief, I'd go over and he'd call me an insolent little bitch and we'd do some weird stuff, and that was just the end of it? But like —" Richard licks his chapped lips, wishing there were another way to put this. "I don't know. We just kind of chose each other. You know. Did the whole thing where you don't sleep with anyone else so condoms aren't a thing, and I know the pass codes to like, all the stuff in his house and he's really obsessed with feeding me and making sure I get enough sleep, which kind of makes me feel like a house plant, but it's not awful?"

Jared doesn't say anything. Richard's not surprised. He usually tends to keep quiet and wait it out when Richard's on one of his rambling, oversharing tears. 

"And I didn't even want to say it was like, an I-love-you situation, I thought we were just comfortable or whatever," Richard admits. 

"Were you comfortable?"

"We are. Or, like, we were until the whole CodeRag thing," Richard says with a sigh. "Now I don't know. It's been a fucking crazy couple of weeks."

Jared is quiet, thoughtful. He looks down at Richard and Richard can practically see the gears turning inside his head. "Can I ask a personal question, Richard?"

"Uh, I mean, yeah. Obviously, yeah."

"Are you in love with him?"

Richard licks his lips again, and then again. The roof of his mouth feels like the wad of cotton pulled from a fresh bottle of pills, dry and unpleasant in the worst way. "I guess. Kind of. Yeah."

"You don't sound very certain."

"I don't — I have no frame of reference for this? How many people have I dated, never mind been in love with? Like, I've had three semi-serious things, ever, and this is one of them?" Agitated, Richard runs a hand through his hair, yanking at the roots. "I guess I — I don't know. I want to be around him and sometimes I see shit that makes me think of him and I always send him a photo of it. He's fucking weird but I like watching him do yoga and cook and he's really fucking good at chess and he makes me, just, I don't know. Calm. And when the whole fucking thing with C.J. happened, I kind of wanted to die, but I was also relieved, because it meant I could start talking about him to other people because honestly he's so fucking weird and you don't know what you're missing. I don't know, is that enough?"

Jared's quiet again. Still. It's funny, Richard thinks, they really fucked it up. He wouldn't — not now. Not with this odd feeling of clarity rushing over him. It's like he's seeing in color for the first time, and everything around him is teal and fuchsia and highlighter yellow, the saturation cranked up a bit too high to seem real. His chest is calm. His stomach is calm.

“Have you ever read the book The Giving Tree?” Jared says after a moment, and Richard squints.  
  
“I think so,” he says. “Recap it to me.”  
  
“It’s a very lovely book by Shel Silverstein,” Jared says immediately, his voice much too earnest. Warm and earnest. His modus operandi. Richard looks at him, half smiling. He remembers the cover, all green with black and red and white line drawings. He just doesn’t remember the story. “I’m sure you remember the basic plot. There’s a boy, and a tree, and the tree loves the boy very much, and at first it seems like functioning and reciprocal relationship. The tree gives him shade and a place to play, and later gives up her apples, and her branches, and eventually her trunk for his happiness. And the tree is happy to do so, that’s the point. ‘And the tree was happy.’ That’s the last line of the story.”  
  
“Right,” Richard says. “I totally remember that. So the point is?”  
  
“Well, it was one of the only books in my second foster home,” Jared says matter-of-factly. “There was a copy of The Giving Tree, and a few books that I don’t really believe were suitable for children, mostly Bibles, but that’s not quite the point. I went back to it quite a lot, as I wasn’t allowed to bring home any secular books from the library. I don’t believe those people knew that Silverstein was Jewish, I think they saw it as a Christian metaphor… anyway. I spent quite a bit of time with that text.”  
  
“That explains a lot,” Richard says, and Jared smiles faintly.  
  
“I related to it,” he says slowly. “I still do, in a sense.”  
  
“Jared…”  
  
“Hm?”  
  
Richard doesn’t have a follow-up. He looks at Jared again, quiet and full of more selfish, stupid hope, and he waits. If Jared wants him, he can have him. Richard would be — Richard wouldn’t fight back, wouldn’t push him away. He waits, and he can hear only the shallow intake of breath.

"I'll talk to Bighead," says Jared after a moment, and Richard shakes his head.

"No," he says, "I should do it. He's my — it's my problem."

There's an odd little moment of quiet between them, and Richard's about to shut his eyes again when Jared pats him gently, once, on the knee.

"Good luck," he says gently. 

He watches Jared leave the room, and licks his lips. _And the tree was happy._

 

* * *

  
  
Gavin picks up on the first ring. Richard doesn't really know what to say.

"Hey," he finally starts, after a moment. "It's not too late, is it?"

Gavin scoffs. "It's only midnight."

"Right. Okay." Richard glances across his dark bedroom. He can still smell Jared on the sheets, and it makes him feel guilty, even though he knows, logically, he has nothing to feel guilty for. "Are you... are you alone? Or whatever?"

"I just got home." Pause, and Richard can hear a door click shut in the background. "Literally, just. Aaron cut the evening short. Are you all right?"

"I'm fine," Richard says, and then pauses. "How was your meeting?" 

"It was fine. We're signing contracts tomorrow." Gavin sounds distracted, and Richard frowns. If he's interrupting something — if he's imposing — or worse, if there's someone else there in the room —

"You are alone, right?" he asks abruptly.

"Hm?" Gavin sounds genuinely taken aback. "Of course. I told you, I just got home. I have a place here in Malibu. Traffic was a nightmare — here, do you want me to video chat you so that you can be sure?"

Richard closes his eyes, runs a hand over his face. "No. Sorry. I don’t need — I wouldn’t need that, ever. My brain’s just all over the place. I don't know where I am right now."

A chuff of laughter into the other line, and he hears Gavin exhale, like he's just sat down. "Where are _you_?" Gavin asks, and Richard sighs.

"Home. Uh, the incubator," Richard says.

Gavin hums. "Outside?"

"Inside. In bed."

"What are you wearing?"

Richard's eyes fly open as he realizes where this is heading. "Gavin —"

"Humor me. It's been a fucking terrible night, Richard, just humor me."

A slight exhale as Richard tries to put the words together. He's so not built for this — the verbal stuff is not his strong suit — but he keeps his eyes shut, thinking about what he's supposed to be saying. What people say under these circumstances. "Okay," he says uncertainly. "Uh, I'm wearing what I always wear to bed, I don't know. Boxers and a t-shirt."

"Which boxers?" Gavin asks, and Richard has to glance downward to look.

"Uh." _The ones with the little dachshunds on them_. "They're just blue."

"Hm." Gavin sounds unconvinced. "And you're in bed?"

"Yeah, uh, my loft bed. Up high." _Up high_? That's not anywhere near sexy. "What about you? What are you, uh, wearing?"

Gavin chuckles. "The suit you like. Tweed with a navy shirt. No tie..." He trails off, then adds, "I could have worn one. I thought about it before the meeting. You'd like that, wouldn't you?"

"You in a tie?" Richard swallows. He actually would, that's the thing. "I mean. Yeah."

"Grabbing me, wrapping it around your hand, the way you get when you're feeling bossy," Gavin smirks through the phone. "I could tie your hands, and make you undo my pants with your teeth."

"Jesus." Richard presses his hand against his erection tenting his boxers. It's just enough to make him want more, and he hisses through his teeth. "I mean, I can't make any promises as to the efficiency of that, but —"

"Just go with it, Richard," Gavin grumbles, and Richard takes a breath, nodding to himself. He can do this. He gets it.

"Yeah. Okay, I'd undo your fly with my teeth," he says slowly, trying to picture it. When he's got a good mental image going, he takes another breath, thinks logistics. "Were you hard already?"

"I am now," Gavin says, his voice low and rough, and fuck, if Richard was on the fence before —

"Yeah," he says, and he plunges, feet-first, into it. "Yeah. Okay. What would you want me to do?"

Gavin breathes slowly, heavily, like he's already stroking himself. "Honestly, I just want to look at you. On your knees in front of me with your hands bound behind you," he says. "So eager to please, and that's what makes you so special, isn't it? You don't just want any cock in your mouth, you want _my_ cock."

Richard takes a deep breath and pushes his boxers down with one clumsy hand. "I — yeah," he agrees breathlessly. That part's true. "I want to, uh, suck you off. Take you all the way down."

"You practiced just for me," Gavin murmurs. "I love that, Richard. I love watching you take my whole cock down your slutty throat. Hungry little thing."

Richard gasps as he gets his hand around his cock, strokes a couple times. He's hard, leaking, and he swipes at the precome gathering at his slit and smears it over the head — licks his palm a couple times before jerking himself a little faster. "What else do you love?" he asks, contentious, wondering if Gavin will take the bait. 

"Your lips," Gavin answers immediately, as if he was expecting the question. "Your cheeks, too, they get so pink and flushed. And your eyes —"

"What else?"

Gavin pauses, his tone changing when he answers. "What about you?" he asks instead.

"Hm?"

"Tell me what you love about me."

Fuck. This wasn't the plan. Richard bites the inside of his cheek, squeezes the base of his cock, praying he won't lose his erection because of this. "Uh," he says quietly, faltering, and then, the first thing that bursts into his mind: "Your taste."

"My taste —"

"Yeah," he says, his cheeks going warm as he thinks about it. "All of you. I — you taste amazing. Your cock, your come —" Gavin hisses a little into the phone and Richard knows he's hit on something good. "And the way you smell, too."

"How's that?"

"Like a fucking _man_ ," he says. “All… salty and clean. I love it when you've been sweating. I want to eat you out every morning after you work out, I don't care. Your body is, like, I mean, you know how good it is, but like sometimes it really fucks me up. You smell so good."

"Jesus," Gavin murmurs. And then: "I want to fist you."

 _Jesus indeed_ , Richard thinks, his eyes sliding shut as he strokes himself faster and faster, finding a new, more frantic pace. That was a quick jump, but — _fuck_. He fumbles with his phone in his unoccupied hand, sets it to speaker and places it on his chest so as to circle a finger around his rim. Just tracing, pressing down, slick with spit — just a tease, a suggestion of a presence. Imagining Gavin. Seeing Gavin beyond his vision. "Oh my god," he says, voice choked and going low. 

"Do you want that, Richard?" Gavin sounds frantic and hungry. "Do you want to be all full of me? Fuller than you can even imagine?"

"Yes, please," Richard confesses in a shameful whisper. He tries to imagine — thinks about Gavin's big hands, his thick fingers, how he'd tossed his head back and whined and howled the time they'd tried for four —

"The pressure is exquisite, you can't even think," Gavin mutters, sounding as though he's about to come undone. "God, your eyes all teary and your face bright red as you take me, as you look down and realize how much you've taken — maybe I'd put a cock ring on you, so you couldn't come until I let you."

Richard can't breathe. He speeds up, quickening his pace even more, pressing his left index finger inside himself. Crooks it, clenches around it, imagining something much bigger. Gavin's perfect fingers are thick inside him, one and then two in an instant, stretching him wide. Making him feel _everything_. 

“Gavin,” he gasps, more out of habit than anything, “can I —”  
  
“Oh, God, yes,” Gavin grits out, and that’s it, Richard’s done after that, spilling into his hand with a wheezy little whine as everything goes white behind his eyes.  
  
All that’s left is Gavin’s breathing on the phone, faster and faster as he seems to approach his peak, and Richard, in a daze, picks up the phone from his chest, holds it closer to his mouth. “I love your hands,” he murmurs, “and your eyes. Is that good for you? You like hearing how good you look?”  
  
“Mmm,” Gavin hums, and Richard feels a swell of confidence burst in his chest, still riding the afterglow. He wipes his sticky hands on his boxers beside him, then tosses them down to the floor.  
  
“You look so good,” Richard says. He’s rambling. His mouth’s on a runaway express train. “God. Gavin. I want to touch you.”  
  
“Where?”  
  
“Everywhere,” Richard mumbles, “all over your body, God. Your stupid fucking thighs. I wanna bite them, I don’t know. Worship you.”  
  
“Yes,” Gavin says, his voice low and rough, “yes, Jesus. Worship me —” and then there’s a small gasp, and he hears Gavin cry out, growing more distant from the phone, and then silence.  
  
Richard lies back on the mattress, exhaustion flooding his body. The ceiling, all of three feet away, and its stuccoed paint, is so dramatically lit from here. He reaches up with one limp arm, brushes the tips of his fingers against it, then drops his arm again, waiting for Gavin to say something. It takes a few moments for him to break the silence.  
  
“I assume you’ve heard the voicemails.”  
  
“I didn’t listen,” Richard admits. “I think I got the gist of it.”  
  
Gavin sighs, once more back to business. “My lawyers are looking into the financial records. We find it interesting that ValleyHound has been established so quickly and that they’ve got reputable legal counsel on retainer already. I don’t want to sue, but it looks like we’re not going to have any other choice.”  
  
“It’s weird,” Richard says slowly. “They really just jumped out of nowhere, right? You think there’s a third party involved? Like, someone with a vested interest in you not being in charge at Hooli anymore?”  
  
“That’s exactly what I’m thinking,” Gavin says. “Granted, I’ve had my suspicions for some time, but…”  
  
“I just can’t think who,” Richard says. “Like, unless Peter Gregory is fucking with you from beyond the grave.” He says it lightheartedly, means it as a joke, but Gavin falls silent and Richard’s stomach immediately flips over. “I mean, sorry. I didn’t mean to —”  
  
“It’s fine,” Gavin says shortly. “You should be able to joke about it. It’s fine.”  
  
“Are you…” Richard trails off. He thinks about the letters. He can’t bring them up, not now. Not when Gavin sounds so beaten and defeated on the other line, when things are finally going okay between them now. It brings him no comfort to keep this secret, but for now — he can’t. “You’ve got a real scorched-earth policy, huh?” he says instead, and Gavin offers a short chuff of laughter in response.  
  
“Is that what you think?” Gavin counters.  
  
“I don’t know.” Richard wills his brain to work. His mouth is dry and he would kill for a glass of water, but the idea of getting up and going all the way to the kitchen is an impossible order. “You don’t tell me these things. I always just assumed, you know.”  
  
“Peter wouldn’t have told you,” Gavin muses. “He always did like the telling of the story that made him out to be the hero.”  
  
“Is there another version?” Richard doesn’t like to think about it.  
  
“I should tell you.” Gavin pauses. “I mean, you probably figured it out. He was absolutely my first love. I was sixteen when we met, and it was just, boom, like nothing else. I was a kid who had always felt like the smartest adult in the room, and then all of a sudden I wasn’t.”  
  
“That sounds familiar.” Richard doesn’t mean to say it. “Sorry. Go on.”  
  
“No. It’s true. I didn’t…” Richard lets him pause, cradles his phone between ear and shoulder as he finally climbs down from the bed to retrieve a new pair of boxers. His hand is still sticky with the remnants, so he pads down the hall to the bathroom as Gavin keeps talking. “He was just, you know. Well, you knew him. Brilliant, and always thought ten steps ahead of everyone else. He could make connections between the most remote concepts and expected you to keep up. It was infuriating. I had never felt such deep attraction. We wrote each other countless letters, you know.”  
  
“Really?” Richard feigns surprise as he turns off the faucet with his elbow and dries his hands on a towel. “About what?”  
  
“Everything. Philosophy, concrete ideas, elaborate planning for the future, each other. Peter was the big-idea guy, I was more, you know, nuts and bolts. The tech side. He could see all sides of the dodecahedron while I focused more intently on one plane at a time. And he always tried to reassure me that I was more than that, or that I had other skills, but it didn’t work. I became jealous of his vision. He could tell that I was resentful, I think, but he pretended not to notice. Our terms of ambition were at odds with each other: he wanted to do something quite differently with the tech we had developed. And then it all just went to shit.”  
  
“You broke up,” Richard says.  
  
“He broke up with me. In quite a tremendous way, I may add. There were… we said terrible things to each other. I even tried to burn all the letters he’d sent me, but I found myself unable to go through with it, even as a hollow gesture. So we parted ways, and it was a bit Kramer vs. Kramer, the way we split up the company. And then, six years later…” Gavin laughs bitterly. “Well, you remember the lawsuits.”  
  
“Right. He sued you for patent infringement.” Richard remembers. He remembers poring over coverage of the trial years later on LexisNexis, desperately searching for some sort of answers. Some kind of insight into what made Gavin the person he became. “Billions of dollars worth of damages later…”  
  
“We won our case,” Gavin laughs again. “And he never got over it. Peter spent the rest of his life trying to antagonize me. And it worked, you know, I was never really able to move on. When you love someone so deeply, and they spend the next fifteen years just trying to hurt you, you become a different person. I don’t know. I still miss him. I think about him frequently. That pain, you know, it never goes away.”  
  
Richard is silent. This is more than he needed to know. More than he has ever wanted to know. It’s uncomfortable, and not in a good way, not in the way that the discomfort Gavin normally causes feels. He thinks about all of it.  
  
“I’m sorry,” he says quietly. “You didn’t — I wish I’d known any of this.”  
  
“I wish I’d told you before,” says Gavin. “I think about it every day. You know, when he died, I finally felt free, and it felt like a sign of some kind, that I would finally be able to move on. But it didn’t work. There was that gaping hole where the knife used to be, and I needed to fill it with something, and you just — happened to be in the way.”  
  
Richard blinks. He sits down on the edge of the bathtub, staring at the tile in front of him. “That’s not a compliment.”  
  
“That’s not what I meant by it,” Gavin says coolly. “I’ve given this a great deal of thought. I hated you, you know, I obsessed over you, and it was because I saw a great deal of Peter in you. You were a perfect ringer for who he used to be.”  
  
“That’s not—” Stop it, Richard wants to say, stop making this worse, but he can’t say it, the words stick to the roof of his mouth. Gavin doesn’t stop. Gavin keeps talking.  
  
“I needed someone else to be angry at. I obsessed over the similarities between you and him. And then you just — you weren’t that person. You’re more like me, truth be told, but moreover…” Gavin sighs. “I’ve had trouble putting this into words. You have to understand. I’m sorry to do this to you now. I tried to tell you in Tulsa, but you looked so alarmed. You’re not like either of us, Richard. You’re a brilliant, inimitable disaster and I love you deeply. I just don’t want there to be any confusion on the subject going forward.”  
  
Richard is silent. His body can’t manage to move, and he certainly can’t manage words as it sinks over him. Gavin seems okay with the silence. He sits there for moments, what must be close to a minute, maybe even two, before he murmurs, “I read the letters.”  
  
A momentary silence, and Richard’s entire body aches, churning, high-tide waves beating at the jagged rocks of his skeletal structure. When he breaks it, Gavin doesn’t sound surprised. “How many?”  
  
“All of them.” Rubs his face, pinches the bridge of his nose. “All of them except the last. I’m sorry.”  
  
“Don’t.” Gavin’s voice is taut, thin-sounding. “I know. I noticed one missing. You didn’t read that one, too?”  
  
“I haven’t,” Richard confesses. “I took it — I wasn’t sure what to do, I didn’t want you to — Jesus, Gavin, I’m so sorry, I should have told you, I didn’t —”  
  
Gavin sighs heavily. Richard can picture him, there at this house in Malibu that he’s seemingly never mentioned before, pants and shirt collar still undone on some Danish modern couch, rubbing his face in exhausted, beaten acceptance. Richard tries to summon another apology, but it doesn’t come. He just — waits. In his own silent acceptance of whatever Gavin, and the rest of the universe, throws at him. He waits.  
  
“I wanted to hear it from you,” Gavin says, and then, “I’ll be home Friday night.”  
  
“Uh,” says Richard. “Does that mean —”  
  
“I’m going to bed now, Richard,” says Gavin, and he hangs up.


	6. The Gentle Hum of Anxiety

When Richard finally hauls himself out of bed the morning after, it’s with a leaden weight in his stomach and one to match behind his eyes. The fear sets in, cold and sullen, as he showers and sloughs pomade — the stuff Gavin bought him, that he said would bring out his curls — through his hair. He tries not to think about Gavin as he brushes his teeth, as he dresses, but it doesn’t take. He weighs himself, blinks at the number on the scale. He’s lost two pounds since this whole thing started. Jesus fucking Christ.  
  
He thinks about Gavin, just then, and he feels like he’s about to puke.  
  
He wishes he had a reason for why the fuck he did that. Why the fuck he said it. What the fuck prepossessed him to think that was a good idea, or even an okay idea, or that honesty might ever possibly be the best policy or whatever. Honesty isn’t shit, he thinks as he swipes Mitchum for Men under his arms; honesty has never served him well outside of the law. Honesty, within the bounds of his personal life, meager as it has always been, has never been more of a help than a hindrance. Because being honest, for him, has always meant displaying the worst parts of himself. There’s nothing good or pure or beautiful about his innermost self. He’s not Jared; he’s not even a Bighead. He’s selfish and stupid and fucks up every good thing he gets his hands around, even when it’s something, or someone, as selfish and stupid as Gavin Belson.  
  
When he emerges, the incubator is already full, everyone already hard at work. 10:05. Minor upside, or whatever, to working twenty feet from his fucking bed. He slams himself down into his desk chair and claps on the noise-canceling headphones, plugs them into the jack, and locks himself in.  
  
Richard buries himself in the work. He puts on Spotify and chooses a playlist almost at random — something unassuming, one of his recommended playlists. Mostly hip-hop, his sweet spot. Kendrick, Chance, Joey Bada$$. Drake, three Drake songs in alternating order, split apart by nothing tracks designated as filler between Drake: call a spade a spade, that’s what it is. Gambino, obnoxious but relatable: _Rich kid, asshole, paint me as a villain_. Richard mouths the words along as he hunches over his keyboard, fingers pounding the keys in time as he notices one mistake after another, hurries to fix all of them. T-minus 3 hours until the beta goes live over the lunch hour and he can move on to a whole other set of worries.  
  
He loses himself in the work. It’s easy, like this, the rest of the world blocked out, just him and his headphones and the clear binary right-and-wrongness of the code in front of him. Binaries. This is what they’re good for. A million different permutations of what might constitute wrong, but right is right. Nothing subjective about being the best. There’s no what-if, no ceteris paribus to creating a patch that fixes a minor lag in the P2P streaming application. There’s nothing wait-and-see about what he does.  
  
It’s better like this. The playlist ends and without really looking, he switches to another. This is less in tune with the first, less upbeat. This one kicks off with Cold War Kids, but it doesn’t really make him flinch. He likes Cold War Kids okay. He doesn’t really pay attention until the chorus hits: _How am I the lucky one? I do not deserve / to wait around forever when you were there first_ , shouts the vocalist, and Richard sits up a little straighter and flinches. Panic attaches its mean little suction cups to his lungs with all eight tentacles and it sucks.  
  
Think about it. Put into perspective. Do the worksheet that therapist gave him once. What’s the irrational thought? Oh, only that he ruined the best and only thing he’s ever had with unmitigated honesty and also by being a selfish prick and invading the privacy of probably the only person to ever love him properly. After it’s already been invaded by the entire fucking world via a stupid fucking blogger with a stupid fucking grudge. Basically, he took a shitty situation and made it a million times worse. Twisted the knife. The fact that it’s Gavin doesn't absolve him. He wouldn’t be more or less at fault if it were anyone else. He’s not getting any enemy-of-my-enemy points from anyone else for this. When an asshole falls in love with you, and you fall in love with that asshole right back, their being an asshole doesn’t make you any less responsible for their well-being. Panic is jabbing its mean judgmental little finger into his chest and shouting right in his face, spraying spittle with every word. This self-talk worksheet isn’t doing its fucking job.  
  
Richard groans, and he switches back to the hip-hop playlist.  
  
An hour or so later, he looks up from his work to see Bighead across the room, sipping a soda and chatting idly with Jared. He makes eye contact with Richard, when Richard initiates, and offers a small smile. Richard nods in acknowledgment, and mouths, _Outside?_  
  
Bighead meets him under the lemon tree, his Super Gulp of Cherry Coke in hand. Richard can practically taste it, metallic sugar-sweet and sickening, and he cringes. He doesn’t know when he became this person. He can barely do the Red Bull anymore without fixating on the sugar content, and that’s a _tool_. 

“So,” Richard says hesitantly. “I don’t know if you — did Jared talk to you yet?”  
  
“About the board meeting today?” asks Bighead, all wide-eyed and unassuming and sounding a little bit stoned. “Yeah, we’re good.”  
  
“I, uh, no,” Richard says. “I think, uh, okay. I’m not really sure how to put this.”  
  
“Oh,” says Bighead as he takes a seat in a pool chair. “Is this about you and Gavin Belson?”  
  
Richard blinks. “Yeah. What? How did you —”  
  
“I just figured. You know. The voicemails and everything that happened yesterday,” Bighead shrugs. He sips his Coke and Richard watches him from the corner of one eye, unsure how to proceed from there. From here. From wherever. “You doing okay? I kind of wanted to ask, but I didn’t wanna be nosy.”  
  
“I — yeah, I’m fine,” Richard lies. Because getting into a whole thing about his mental state with Bighead is not the way to go. Not right now, anyway. Stupid idea. “You know Gavin and I were in Tulsa last weekend, right?”  
  
“Yeah, I was gonna ask, how was that?” Bighead asks, leaning forward in his chair.  
  
“Good. It was good,” Richard says. Lies again, for the most part. “I would’ve said hi to your folks, you know, if I’d seen them around.”  
  
Bighead shrugs. “Did you see anyone else?”  
  
“Just my parents. And we drove by the high school. That was…” Richard smirks to himself. “Oh, shit, Cam Bailey works at the Piggly Wiggly now, I actually saw him when we stopped to get bottled water.” Laughs a little, just at the memory of it. “I don’t think he recognized me as the kid he used to literally try to shove into lockers.”  
  
“You could’ve introduced yourself,” Bighead grins. “And Gavin.”  
  
Richard snorts. “I don’t think he’d even know who Gavin is.” Lets the moment of sweet schadenfreude pass over him before the heaviness settles back down on his shoulders. “Uh, so yeah, speaking of Gavin. Uh, I was talking to Jared the other night, and there’s no easy way to say this, so I guess I just need to get it out of the way. Have you — did you talk to anyone at CodeRag about me?”  
  
Bighead squints, shaking his head vaguely, and Richard’s heart skitters. “I don’t think so?” says Bighead. “Or, like — I don’t know, it wasn’t CodeRag, specifically.”  
  
“What do you mean, specifically?” Panic thumps its combat boot down into Richard’s blood. “You didn’t confirm anything about me and Gavin to anyone, did you?”  
  
Bighead sighs. He takes a long, slurping sip of his Coke and Richard resists the urge to rip it out of his hand, to be the absolute worst version of himself, the version that Gavin often encourages. The ruthless version. The asshole Richard. Asshole Richard is still alive and well inside himself, though, and he’s having a real fucking hard time displaying patience as Bighead takes his own sweet time deciding how to answer the world’s simplest question.  
  
“I dunno,” he shrugs. “C.J. Cantwell just showed up at Peet’s when I was waiting for an investor there? Like, we chatted for a while, and it was all off the record, I made sure to say that. Off the record, she was like, has your friend Richard Hendricks mentioned anything about who he’s dating, we might do a puff piece when the app goes to beta, that might be fun. And I said, off the record, yeah, but it’s not really the piece you want to write? Because you’re kind of already fighting with Gavin Belson, and —”  
  
“Fuck!” Richard can’t hold back this time. He rests his head in his hands, resisting the urge to scream again. He can’t get a record as a guy who screams indiscriminately, not on top of everything else. But —  
  
“Bighead,” he says tersely. “You do realize that ‘off the record’ doesn’t really mean anything, right? That’s, like, just a figure of speech. It’s not a legal obligation under any circumstances.”  
  
Bighead widens his eyes, shakes his head. “So it’s not like how a cop has to tell you he’s a cop when you ask?”  
  
“ _Jesus fucking Christ_.” Richard places his head in his hands and groans. Bighead. Fucking Bighead. Chill and positive and dumb as a box of fucking hair. He glances up to see Bighead frowning at him, and he checks himself. There’s no use getting angry. What’s over is over, and since he’s pretty sure Gavin’s just going to dump his ass as soon as he’s back from L.A. tonight, there’s no reason to do this. “That’s actually an urban legend. Cops don’t have to tell you if they’re a cop, but they rely on that a lot since it’s become such a popular media trope. Anyway — no. It’s not… Jesus, Bighead.”  
  
“Dude, I’m so sorry,” Bighead says. “Honestly. If there’s anything I can do, I’ll —”  
  
“No, it’s fine,” Richard says quietly. “Just don’t answer any more questions about me and Gavin Belson, okay? To _anyone_.  Even if it’s just friendly conversation. He’s on the warpath trying to find out who the source was that outed me so that he can sue their asses into oblivion, and I don’t really look forward to explaining that it was a friendly mix-up, but…” He groans again. “Keep your mouth shut.”  
  
“Got it. Will do.” Bighead chances a small smile, and then shrugs. “I guess it could be worse, though? Like, it really was a mistake, I had no idea. At least you know nobody’s specifically trying to out you.”  
  
“It wasn’t… you’re not being weird about it,” Richard observes, and Bighead shrugs.  
  
“Gavin’s a cool guy. I mean, he’s an asshole, but he’s a cool guy. Plus this means you guys have stopped fighting, so we don’t have to worry that Hooli’s gonna steal the new app or anything.” A grin. “Anyway, I actually do have a meeting, so.”  
  
“Yeah. Totally. Not a problem.”  
  
The beta goes live at 2pm, and from there on out, nobody’s getting much done. “Technically, there’s still work to do,” Richard says inefficiently over the excited chatter, but nobody hears him — aside from Jared, who’s looking intently at analytics and flitting back and forth between two spreadsheets — and pretty soon, Erlich comes out of the kitchen with an armful of beers and it’s all over. Summer Fridays, Richard reminds himself, even though Labor Day’s over and it’s not summer by most conventions anymore; be cool. 

Erlich hands him a beer, already cracked, and he sighs and accepts it. When in Rome, or whatever, and if nobody else is working he doubts he’ll be able to.  
  
He finds himself outside, some hours later, nursing a fourth Sierra Nevada since Erlich had bought the white IPAs just for him. Erlich collapses into a chair beside him and claps Richard heartily on the knee.  
  
“Well, Richard,” he announces, “we fucking did it.”  
  
Richard can’t hold back a small smile at this. Yeah. They did fucking do it. Somehow, despite a world of setbacks and false starts, they’ve released a beta for a really fucking good video chat application out into the world. Despite everything. It’s — it could be worse, is all.  
  
“Yeah,” he mutters. “We fucking did it.”  
  
Erlich cocks a brow. “Should I congratulate myself on being able to successfully take your mind off whatever the fuck is going on between you and Pol Pot?”  
  
“Okay, first of all, unfunny comparison, Pol Pot killed millions of people,” Richard groans, “and second, fuck you, is that what this is about?” He gestures around. “We’re losing time, we could actually be working —”  
  
“Nobody would be working, Richard. This is a big day. Get the billion-dollar dildo out of your ass and relax,” Erlich says, and Richard forces himself to laugh.  
  
“Okay,” he says again. “Fine. Did you — did Jared tell you something was going on?”  
  
He watches Erlich frown. “No,” he says slowly. “But that means there _is_ something going on.”  
  
Richard blanches. “Who told you?”  
  
“You just did, dumbass!” Erlich sounds almost triumphant, as if it’s a matter in which triumph is an appropriate reaction. Richard clenches his jaw. He tries to calm the whirling in his stomach, which had somehow been quieted over the course of the day by some combination of the beers and the excitement and the sheer persistence of effort and accomplishment. Fuck. Fuck fuck fuck. Don’t think about the hole in your head for five hours but as soon as it comes back you wonder how you ever thought about anything else. Gavin is going to leave him because he was selfish and nosy. Fuck fuck fuck.  
  
Richard holds up a hand. “Look,” he says. “Can we just — can we not.”  
  
“Aw.” Erlich shifts in his chair, cocks his head. “So something really happened? Jesus, I thought you two were on your way to the chapel a week ago.”  
  
“Mm.” Swigs his beer. It’s just about flat and long since lukewarm but the idea of getting another doesn’t appeal to him. He thinks about switching to hard liquor, but the last time he made that mistake he was hungover for what felt like two days. Jesus. He’s always been a fucking lightweight, but has only been getting lighter as he rounds on 30. He kind of gets why Gavin doesn’t drink much.  
  
Erlich’s looking at him with an odd sort of curiosity, the kind Richard doesn’t much want to encourage. Because Erlich is — ahh, Jesus fuck. Erlich’s himself. A Pamplona bull in the world’s china shop. It’s not like it’d be the end of the world, to tell him the truth, but his lack of finesse —  
  
“I kind of fucked things up,” Richard says, outside himself. But he doesn’t stop. “Like, I know you’ve got your preexisting bias and everything. But trust me. It was my fault. I definitely fucked it up.”  
  
To Richard’s surprise, Erlich doesn’t argue. He doesn’t even look halfway surprised. He just leans back in his chair and says, “Go on.”  
  
“Uh,” says Richard. “This is between us.”  
  
“Of course it is, Richard. Do I look like C.J. Cantwell?”  
  
“Well, okay, here’s the thing,” Richard says slowly. “Basically, I just — I found these letters I wasn’t supposed to find.”  
  
“He was using you as recon for our app the whole time,” Erlich nods knowingly, and Richard groans again. He’s hitting new highs in his daily groan-per-capita record. Jesus fuck.  
  
“No, it wasn’t that,” he says. “I… you know he and Peter Gregory were a thing, right? Like, I know CodeRag printed it, so everyone knows now, but yeah. That was… it was real. And Gavin kept all these love letters they wrote each other, and I found them while I was snooping around and I fucking read them. All of them. And Gavin figured it out, and I think he manipulated me into telling him myself because he wanted proof that I’m some kind of, I don’t know, awful person who doesn’t deserve love.” Richard exhales, then adds, before Erlich can interject, “And by the way, they were really interesting. Like, I don’t know. I wish I’d known Gavin before everything with Peter happened. He sounds like a different person. But…” He shrugs, tips his head back against the chair and inhales, exhales slowly. “I’m like, 90% certain he’s just flying back to break up with me? And I’ve been trying really hard not to think about it too much because if I do, I’m probably just gonna have a fucking meltdown.”  
  
“Richard,” Erlich says slowly. “Richard. Richard.”  
  
“Huh.”  
  
“What did you think would happen?” Richard opens his eyes and looks straight at Erlich, who is holding his beer at his lips and looks serious and critical. “I mean. Any of us could’ve seen this coming. Hell, we’ve only known about it for a week, but we’ve already got a betting pool on as to when this thing between you two will completely self-destruct.”  
  
“You — what?”  
  
“Gilfoyle had odds on ‘before the beta goes live.’ Damnit. I had you two at least holding out until the end of the month.” Erlich sighs. “The point is —”  
  
“You guys were all just betting on when my relationship would fall apart?” Richard says, heart hammering a little harder. “What the fuck, Erlich?”  
  
“Don’t yell at me,” Erlich says, looking a little put-out. “It was Dinesh’s idea.”  
  
“Great. Like I didn’t have enough to fucking deal with without my friends talking shit about me behind my back,” Richard spits. He sets his beer down on the concrete beside him and contemplates walking straight into the swimming pool. He compromises by getting up and — pacing. Just pacing. Erlich watches with vague interest, but Richard resolves to pay him no interest at all. _In fact_.  
  
“I’m going for a walk,” he says, to Erlich but also to no one in particular aside from himself.

 

* * *

  
  
The sun has already started to set in the neighborhood, and everyone inside the incubator stares at him as he stalks through the house. Whatever. Fucking let them. Jared looks like he’s got something to say, but he holds it back. Whatever. He was in on the betting pool, too. Fantasy Richard Hendricks’ Personal Life League. Sure. Great. His jaw hurts, and he consciously unclenches it. Fuck all of them.  
  
He takes off down the street, past house after house, placid and suburban. He used to do this as a kid. When the tightness in his chest started to feel like too much, before he had the words for it, just start walking and turn around once it starts to feel normal again. He got in trouble for that a few times, got his first cell phone at 12 because his parents had no idea where the fuck he’d wander off to. Kaitlin yelled and thrashed about that until she got her own on her 11th birthday. Not like it served the same purpose, but whatever.  
  
Walk until the tension goes away. He should’ve brought his phone _now_ , but whatever. The silence is probably better for it, anyway. Nothing but the chirping of birds, cooing of a dove in a tree somewhere that gets louder as he walks southbound down the subdivision street.  
  
This is what’s going to happen: Gavin is going to break up with him. He’s not going to cry about it. Gavin manipulated him into weirdly-timed confessions of love just so as to break his heart on the other side. Gavin knew what he was doing. Gavin, as he has always done, played the long game. Gavin played the long game for a fucking year and a half. He clenches his fists at his sides as he walks faster. Maybe he should’ve brought his phone with him after all, because this pounding in his head isn’t getting any quieter.  
  
Fucking Gavin. Fucking fucker. He knew what he was doing; he knew how to play Richard this whole time and he _did_ it. All of it. The breakfast smoothies and the quiet post-morning-yoga sex where he let Richard lave his tongue along his collarbones. The bitter, vicious debates and the way Gavin once pressed a handkerchief to his face during a nosebleed, tilted his head forward and waited it out. Gavin’s hands, pressing him down, kneading out the stress of running a company, pulling him apart like biscuit dough from a can. The chess. All the games Gavin lost, forty percent on average, and the way he went cool and sullen afterward until Richard pulled at the string of beads on his wrist and snapped the elastic against his skin, bringing him back to earth.  
  
The ease with which Gavin touches him, the bossy, willful assurance, drives like bamboo shoots under his nails. It gets under his skin, making him itch.  
  
All of it, though? He doesn’t fucking understand. It couldn’t have all been some archaic form of torture, not when Gavin seemed to be enjoying it as much as he did. In Tulsa, that morning in the hotel room — when he woke up to lips on his collarbone. Blinked awake, bleary and disconcerted, to Gavin looking up at him with a knowing little smirk and trailing his mouth down to Richard's right nipple.

Acquiescing to this stuff, he has learned, is  normally worth the momentary internal struggle. Gavin is, admittedly, more of a doer than a thinker, and he himself vice versa. And if he hesitates, Gavin stops cold, all passive-aggressive, and then nothing ever gets done. It's a constant plunge into ice-cold water that warms up as soon as he's all the way in it. But fuck the plunge. The numbness. The mind-numbing shock of cold. 

Gavin already knew, that’s the fucked-up thing. The whole time, he knew, but still scraped his teeth across Richard's nipple, biting down gently. The whole time, he knew,but kept going at him with a focused post-morning-meditation energy, kissing his sternum all lazily, tongue moving across his ribs. It felt good, the kisses he pressed into Richard’s rib cage and hips and thighs. The whole time, he knew Richard was lying to him, and he kept going anyway.  
  
Richard hates him. Richard fucking hates him.  
  
It’s definitely on the darker side of dusk now, and, Richard thinks, he should probably turn around. He doesn’t quite recognize this cluster of houses, but he’s been walking in more or less a straight line, only turning right when absolutely necessary — that’s always been his MO, only right turns and he can always find his way back home. He blinks at the street sign on the corner. La Verde Avenue. Spanish-style architecture as far as the eye can see. He’ll never get used to this, not really, the sun-baked sameness of California. The burnt-brown landscapes of the valleys, all of them. The Santa Clara, the San Fernando, the Central Valley, thick with air pollution and despair. All of them the same and different in their own ways.  
  
Gavin likes the landscapes. Gavin, born and bred in San Jose, has a surprisingly good attitude about where he’s from. Jared speaks conversational Spanish and translates for Richard sometimes, barely realizing he’s doing it — Jared, who bounced around from foster home to foster home in Fresno, has more in common with Gavin, raised by academics as an only child in the Santa Clara Valley, than he’d think. “I left and I came back,” Jared said once, “because I really do think it’s the most beautiful state in the country.” Tall poppy, Richard had teased him, the double entendre evident. Jared laughed. Richard didn’t tell him that Gavin felt exactly the same.  
  
Tulsa is a place you grow out of; a train station built solely for departures. California, a port, built for arrivals. He sees it all now, clear as day.

* * *

 

  
The dusk has fully settled into night by the time he arrives back at the incubator. Richard walks up the front walk, hands shoved deep in his sweatshirt pockets, a picture of preoccupation. The lights are all on, but the raucous sounds of partying seem to have died down a bit — odd, he thinks, but pushes the front door open and slips inside anyway.  
  
He’s barely got his shoes off in the doorway when Erlich appears in the foyer. “What the fuck, Richard?” He’s got him by the arm, yanks him toward the living room immediately. “Where the fuck were you?”  
  
“Please stop accosting me,” Richard protests weakly. “I went for a walk.”  
  
“Without your fucking phone?!” Richard stops fighting back and allows Erlich to lead him into the living room, following sheepishly, hands still deep in his pockets. “We’ve been trying to get ahold of you this whole time, asshole.”  
  
“Jesus. Okay. Point taken,” says Richard. “I wanted to get away for half an hour, all right? It’s not like I went all Gone Girl on you guys —”  
  
“Well, there’s someone here to see you,” Erlich mutters darkly, and as they round the corner into the kitchen, Richard stops dead in his tracks.  
  
It doesn’t make sense. It’s like an optical illusion or some kind of visual trick, because Gavin Belson doesn’t belong here, in this house, surrounded by these people. Gavin is standing by the fridge, eating a Greek yogurt like there’s absolutely nothing odd about this, looking around the room with vague interest and dodging the stares of Dinesh, Gilfoyle, and Jian Yang, all gathered at the other end of the kitchen.  
  
Richard clears his throat, and Gavin’s eyes flick over to meet his, spoonful of yogurt frozen halfway to his mouth.  
  
“Hey,” Richard offers weakly.  
  
There’s a long, quiet pause. Gavin says nothing, makes no move toward him, just eats a spoonful of yogurt and licks the spoon clean meticulously. Drops the container into the trash, rinses the spoon and leaves it in the basin of the sink. “Richard,” he says after a moment. “I think you and I should talk.”  
  
Panic comes roaring back, attaches the vacuum cleaner attachment nozzle to his lungs and turns the machine on full blast. But Richard nods, imagines dunking his face into a tub of ice-cold water, and then nods again. “Outside, maybe?” he offers, and Gavin shakes his head.  
  
“Somewhere with a bit more privacy, perhaps,” he says, and Richard nods.  
  
“Okay,” he says. “I, uh — my bedroom. Let’s go.”  
  
Gavin doesn’t speak, but follows him down the hall. Richard’s hands tremble a little as he opens his bedroom door, the inevitable weighing him down like concrete boots. He steps into his bedroom, then opens the door a little wider to usher Gavin in. Watches Gavin look around, taking it in, suppress a chortle of laughter at the Cruising poster on the wall. Waits.  
  
“So,” Gavin says after a moment. “This is where you sleep.” He doesn’t sound impressed.  
  
Richard shrugs. “I, uh, yeah.” He barely bothers to come up with more than a weak stammer in response. It’s not worth it. Fuck the small talk, get to the chase. “Are you here to break up with me?”  
  
Gavin looks genuinely taken aback, and he steps back, folds his arms across his black quarter-zip. “What makes you think that?”  
  
“Oh, I mean, literally everything.” Richard gestures vaguely in front of him, rolls his eyes. “Me. Everything I did. You and your fucking manipulation. Every fucking thing that’s happened between us over the past week, that’s what.”  
  
“What do you mean?” Gavin sounds shocked, curious, but _sounds_ is the key word. Richard isn’t going to fucking let him do this. His pulse hammers in his throat as he stares down the barrel of Gavin’s cold, dark eyes, and he lets loose.  
  
“You. Everything you did. Why the fuck did you make me tell me I loved you?”  
  
“I didn’t _make_ you do anything,” Gavin protests, but Richard shakes his head, holds up a hand.  
  
“Then what was that in Tulsa?” he demands. “Why would you even go so far as to make me go to Tulsa with you? Why would you meet my parents and tell me you love me in front of them if you already knew that I had read your letters and lied about it?! What the fuck is wrong with you, Gavin? Because something is wrong, really fucking wrong, if you think that’s, like, some kind of normal thing people do to each other. Normal people would, I don’t know, be like, ‘Hey, I know you’re keeping a secret from me and I just want you to come clean,’ I guess, or whatever, not say ‘Hey, let’s go meet your parents and by the way I’m in love with you and I’m all emotionally compromised because I’m fighting some fucking War of the Roses with a shitty gossip blog so I’m gonna need you to say you love me too, like, pronto, thanks!’ What the fuck?!”  
  
He’s breathing hard, barely even aware of what he’s saying or doing. All he knows is that he’s got the knife between Gavin’s ribs, rusty as fuck and full of poison, and all he wants to do is twist until the whole fucking thing is destroyed.  
  
Gavin holds up a hand as Richard, chest heaving, catches his breath. “Are you done?” he asks, acerbic, and Richard lets out a long exhale and nods.  
  
“For the moment,” he says, and Gavin nods.  
  
“Good,” he says. “How does that feel? Got it all out?”  
  
“I — yeah,” Richard says, bat of suspicion beating against his rib cage. “Why are you —”  
  
Gavin holds up that hand again, shakes his head. “My turn,” he says, calm, smooth as volcanic rock, just like always. “I’m not as angry as you seem to think I am, Richard. Although I am curious to know what you mean by ‘manipulated you into telling me you loved me’ — don’t open your mouth, there’ll be plenty of time to explain that later. I came here to let you know that I’ve given the matter some thought, and that I’d like you to reserve your comment until the end.” He pauses, waits for dramatic emphasis, and says, “I came here to tell you that it makes perfect sense, Richard.”  
  
“Uh?”  
  
“You did exactly what I would have done.” Gavin rolls his eyes and holds out both hands, as if what he means is obvious, as if Richard is the moron for not understanding exactly what he’s trying to say. “Richard, come on. What kind of hypocrite would I be if I held a grudge against you for just wanting to know more? _Invasion of privacy_ , for God’s sake — yes, it was an invasion of privacy, but come on. You realize how many people have written their garbage think pieces about how my right to privacy ends where Hooli’s consumer data aggregation begins? Not that I agree with them, mind you, but it was worth the time it took to think about it. You did what I’ve _always_ done. You explored. You acted only after feeling you had all the available information, and you kept your cards to your chest for as long as you thought you could.” He licks his lips, nods tentatively. “Good job.”  
  
Richard furrows his brow. Shakes his head. “Fuck off,” he says, and Gavin gives him a short, cold laugh in response.  
  
“I knew that was coming,” he says. “Richard, what do you mean by I manipulated you? I had no such intentions.”  
  
A huff of laughter. Richard shakes his head and starts pacing, back and forth in front of the poster. “Okay, so, you didn’t try to _manipulate_ me. You just, I don’t know, hid that you knew I’d read the letters, lied about knowing, got me to admit that on my own. What the fuck? I told you! Just tell me what you want to hear from me! Don’t just wait for me to stumble into things, because I’ll never get there, and I’ll feel played, and it just makes me fucking angry.”  
  
Gavin nods. Shortly. “Noted,” he says. “Richard, I’m sorry, but don’t you want to know where my brain was?”  
  
“Fine,” Richard says sarcastically, stopping short and giving him a magnanimous little feigned hat-tip. He’s being an asshole, but fuck it. He’s going to keep being an asshole until someone gets hurt, and it’s not going to be him. He’s finally got his hand around Panic’s globby throat and he’s not letting go until he’s choked the living breath out of it and everything left of this relationship. “Go right ahead.”  
  
Gavin purses his lips. Adam’s apple bobbing in his throat, he swallows, twice, and his voice is softer, calmer when he speaks again. “I didn’t know what I wanted to do,” he says slowly. “I needed — I needed a few days. I wasn’t sure you were ready. I knew I was, but you’re just… I wasn’t positive. I asked everyone I could. Everyone I trust at Hooli. I consulted Denpok at length. They all said the same thing, that you couldn’t be trusted, that this was a mistake, that I was safer and more secure on my own. Denpok, in particular, seemed quite adamant that staying with you would impact my chakra and bring a tremendous amount of negative energy to my life.” He takes a slow, ragged breath, and exhales, and Richard suddenly can’t breathe. “I did the advisable thing once, a long time ago. I let Peter leave and I never got him back. I’m not going to take that chance again, Richard.”  
  
Richard folds his arms. Steels himself. “I’m sorry,” he says, and he watches Gavin take a step back, shrinking, however improbably, into himself. He waits for Gavin to protest. To come back with another argument, to persuade him, like he always does, that he’s going about this the wrong way.  
  
But Gavin doesn’t. Gavin nods, once. “Fine,” he says, and he takes another step back, hand on the doorknob. “I — be well, Richard.”  
  
And then he’s gone, and he doesn’t double back.  
  
Richard doesn’t exhale until he hears the front door slam.


	7. Consider...

He takes two sleeping pills instead of just the one. One isn’t cutting it, he realizes, after an hour of tossing and turning and thrashing and sweating. He rockets up in bed in irritation, clambers down and then back up the ladder with 3mg more melatonin on its way into his bloodstream, and then he waits, eyes closed, on his back, for sleep to take him.  
  
It’s going to be dreamless, which is for the better. It’s always dreamless, when he self-medicates. It’s not good sleep, he kicks and twists the sheets clear off, but it works. It puts him out. Anything not to be awake. Anything not to have to feel what he’s feeling.  
  
It’s irrational, that’s the thing. He has no right to feel like this. He did the right thing; he’s in the clear. His heart beats a little faster as he lies in the dark, in the quiet, sweat beading on his forehead, a choked half-sound stuck in his throat.  
  
It would’ve been easier to just, like, _not_. To let Gavin say whatever he wanted and just accept it. Because the thing is — and the notion creeps in uninvited, unbidden, and thoroughly unwanted, and he’s fucking helpless as to stop it. The thing is: what if he was wrong?  
  
What if there was no master plan. What if Gavin was being honest, just biding his time while he weighed the options, worked through his own unresolved issues on his own time. What if he’s the one at fault here, really and truly in the wrong instead of some nebulous version of _we both could’ve done better._ What if. What the fuck if.  
  
Richard doesn’t realize he’s falling asleep until he blinks himself awake to a bright room full of day. Erlich slams the door open and hurls something up onto the bed.  
  
“Mail for you,” Erlich says, and then pauses. “Are you feeling all right, Richard? You look like a fucking coma patient.”  
  
Richard blinks again, rubs sleep out of his eyes with one hand as he grabs the mail with the other. “What time is it?”  
  
Erlich snorts. “It’s 11:30. I was starting to worry. Hungover?”  
  
“Not really,” Richard says. He’d never gotten around to the hard liquor, anyway, even though the 6mg of melatonin still working its way through his system doesn’t feel good mixing with yesterday’s beers. “Uh, I’ll try to be out in a while.”  
  
With a shrug, Erlich leaves the room. “Do or don’t do, there is no try,” he quotes, and then adds, “but don’t throw yourself off the bridge over whatever happened with you and Satan before talking to us first.”  
  
Richard groans and lies back on the bed, wishing he hadn’t manage to kick all the sheets down onto the floor overnight. He picks up the envelope again, studying the front. His name is written in messy, familiar penmanship over most of it. It’s postmarked from Palo Alto, on Wednesday.  
  
He turns it over and runs his thumb over the flap. _G B_ , reads the return address on the back, and it's a street address Richard knows by heart.  
  
His stomach lurches, and before he can think twice, he clambers down off the bed and into the bathroom, the letter still clenched in his fist, before he can unload the contents of his stomach into the toilet.  
  
It’s fucking horrible. He can’t make it stop, probably wouldn’t be able to if his life depended on it. It’s as though every panicked urge he’s repressed over the past seven days has come home to ruin his esophageal lining. It fucking hurts, burns coming up, and tastes worse than Richard remembers it ever tasting. _You deserve this_ , goes the voice in his brain as he hugs the porcelain. _You deserve this for being such a fucking tool._ He tells it to shut up, shouts louder and louder as he gags again, heaving and shuddering, feeling almost feverish with how much his body just wants the remnants of the previous day gone.  
  
_You deserve this_ , says some other, shittier voice near the back of his psyche, and Richard heaves again. Again and again until there’s nothing left to vacate, and then there’s nothing to do but sink, face-down onto the cool tile floor of the bathroom, mouth buzzing with the foul taste of his own anxiety.  
  
When Richard finally summons the strength to sit back up, he doesn’t bother to move much further. Truth be told, he doesn’t trust his body not to punish him immediately for any attempt to do so. Instead, he sits up with his back against the wall, hugging his knees beside the toilet bowl, and with one shaky hand he reaches again for the letter from Gavin. Runs his thumb under the seal of the envelope.  
  
His mind is curiously blank as he opens the letter, unfolds it in three places. It’s written on rich, engraved stationery, Gavin’s name in navy script at the top.  
  
Tongue between teeth. Holding his breath on purpose, if only for fear that if he lets go, he’ll throw up all over this, too.

 

* * *

  
  
_Richard,_  
  
_I know you read the letters. I have yet to raise the matter with you, but I’m writing and posting this letter before I do, as a forbearance against whatever disagreement may arise from my doing so. Whatever the consequences, I need you to know that I have no hard feelings in this case._  
  
_I know you read the letters, and I don’t care. If anything, it makes me proud. It’s exactly the kind of underhanded move that I would have pulled myself, and I’m glad you arrived to it on your own._  
  
_Now, I don’t know if you’ve read the letter you took yet. You know the one — the last of the stack, the one Peter returned to me unopened. I don’t know if you’ve read that one, and to tell the truth, again, I don’t care. All I can say to you is exactly what I said to Peter in that letter, nearly 20 years ago:_  
  
_I have found my equal, on every level. I would rather be your partner than your nemesis. I would rather be in love with you than have to settle for tepid, performative hatred any longer. I still love you, despite everything._  
  
_Gavin_

 

* * *

  
  
So he goes to Gavin’s.  
  
He doesn’t do it immediately. Richard rereads the letter time after time, pacing the bathroom and then the kitchen as he heats up a breakfast burrito in the microwave. He crams it down his throat, the tortilla hot and dry on the surface and the egg ice-cold in the middle, barely tasting it. He reads the letter, again and again, staring at Gavin’s messy handwriting, the strange flourishes on his Ps and Rs.  
  
_Yes I said yes I will yes gallops his heart_ and he cautions himself, out loud, to slow down and cool it with the fucking James Joyce. “Stop it,” he mutters as he throws on pants and a t-shirt. “Stop it.”  
  
“Why are you talking to yourself?” he hears from the other room, and he rolls his eyes.  
  
“Mind your own business, Jian Yang!” he calls, and then, with his keys in hand, he stops himself. His laptop bag is slewn over a chair, just sitting there. Chilling. Richard rips open the inner zippered compartment and takes out the letter, faded _Return to senders_ canceled all over it in formerly-red ink.  
  
He drives. He drives on autopilot. He drives rehearsing the words in his brain, trying desperately to put together an apology. He drives with his head pounding and his stomach churning again. He drives and gulps down half a bottle of Smartwater before he’s even halfway there, turns off the stereo in annoyance when that fucking Cold War Kids song comes on again, and keeps driving.  
  
_I’m sorry,_ he thinks. _I didn’t think. I was stupid. I’m sorry._  
  
He knows what he needs to say, that’s the thing; it’s getting the words out that’s going to be the problem. He’s never done this before. He’s always been the one to end the relationships in a fit of rashness, sheer irrationality, but he’s never come back. He’s never tried to wheedle his way back into something perfectly good after taking a baseball bat to the headlights and rearview mirrors of it, let alone a switchbade to the tires like that conversation the night before. There’s no fucking way any self-respecting adult person would take him back after that shit fit, so much, Richard thinks, that this is barely even worth the drive. Gavin respects nobody but himself.  
  
_And you,_ pipes up the little bird of hope in the back of his brain, the tentative little chirp that happens to sound a lot like Jared. Gavin respects Richard Hendricks, for whatever goddamn reason. Richard nearly sideswipes a landscaper’s truck as he takes a sharp turn down Gavin’s street, climbing the hills up to his secluded property. Punches in the passcode to the gate; parks in the drive instead of bothering with the garage. His thumbprint still scans him into the front door just fine. It swings open, and Richard takes a single step into the foyer, feeling, for the first time since he left the incubator, that this might be a mistake.  
  
“Gavin?”  
  
Silence.  
  
It’s probably nothing. He’s probably just — around, somewhere, involved in something. As usual. Like he does. Richard takes a deep breath, steels himself. Like a losing prizefighter, bloodied and bruised and staggering forward on one and a half feet, he readies himself for the final round, and he takes off through the house.  
  
No trace of him in the north wing. Richard calls his name every twenty feet or so, trying not to sound too panicked, but his heart jackhammers away in his chest with every extra step. He tears through the south end: nobody there either. This house is fucking cavernous. If Gavin doesn’t want to be found, it occurs to him, he won’t be.  
  
But he doesn’t think about that. Doesn’t think about being ghosted inside the man’s own home. After all, if Gavin didn’t want him here, there were precautions. He could’ve changed the passcodes, changed the scanners, made it clear that Richard were persona non grata here. But he didn’t. And so Richard charges forward, headed for the backyard.  
  
He’s not in the pool, but the water’s not still. There are wet footprints leading away, and Richard follows them until he hits the entrance to the zen garden. Pauses, takes a deep breath.  
  
He opens the gate, and he steps inside, the letter still clenched in his hand.  
  
“Gavin,” he says, more steadily this time, louder, and Gavin turns.  
  
He looks surprised, at the very least. His hair is wet; he’s got a towel around his shoulders. He’s standing at the edge of the koi pond and watching the thick golden fish bob up and down at the surface, and Richard feels a lump growing in his throat as he takes a few steps closer, holding the red ink-stamped envelope out in front of him.  
  
“I have to tell you something,” he says, and Gavin nods.  
  
“Go on,” he says quietly, and Richard swallows.  
  
“I just needed to tell you,” he says again, stalling with a prologue, trying to keep from stuttering as he refers back to the words he pied together in the car. “I don’t know if you want me here, or whatever. I don’t — it’s not important. I mean, it is, but. Um. The source you were looking for, the person who leaked my identity to CodeRag…”  
  
Gavin frowns, shakes his head. “Richard, this isn’t about—”  
  
“No, no, I know that,” Richard says quickly. “Like, I don’t even think you want to fuck with that anymore, I wouldn’t even blame you. I’m not worth it. But I just thought you’d want to know who it was, so that you don’t have to waste any more, like, man hours on recon or whatever.”  
  
“Richard—”  
  
“It was Bighead,” Richard says in a hurried rush. “My friend, uh. Nelson. He used to work at Hooli? You guys know each other. He didn’t mean it, honestly, he doesn’t have a vindictive bone in his body, but C.J. Cantwell just saw him at a coffee shop once and started asking him a bunch of questions and he just — he’s an airhead, you know that. He said something he shouldn’t. So, uh. Yeah.” He glances down at the letter, and adds, “And you can have this back. I didn’t — I never read it. So yeah. That’s all. I just wanted to say those things.”  
  
Richard holds out the letter, watching as Gavin approaches him, step by deliberate step. Gavin shakes his head, a small smile curling at the edges of his lips, and Richard wants to scream; wants to jump out of his skin and just keep climbing until he’s reached the top of the sky. But he doesn’t move, just keeps holding the letter out, stock-still in his tracks until Gavin reaches him and plucks it from his grasp.  
  
“Richard,” he says quietly, and Richard’s eyes widen.  
  
“I know. I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have even taken it, but —”  
  
“Richard,” Gavin says again, more gently. “It wasn’t Nels—Bighead—whatever his goddamn name is. I have no idea what you’re talking about.”  
  
“I —”  
  
“Your friend wasn’t responsible for those articles,” Gavin says. He sounds much too calm, much too self-assured considering how wrong he is. “It wasn’t him at all.”  
  
“Uh, he literally admitted it to me himself,” Richard says testily. “If not Bighead, then who?”  
  
And here Gavin raises both eyebrows, calm and placid. “Who do you think, Richard?” he asks, and he’s so patient Richard could scream. “It was Jack Barker.”  
  
_What the fuck_.  
  
“I, uh —” Richard blinks rapidly, shaking his head. “I don’t — what? No. You and Barker are, like, you’re pals. That’s not, like… I mean, what?”  
  
Gavin sighs. “Richard, will you please just come inside?”  
  
“What?”  
  
“Inside the house. Follow me. I’d like to put on clothes,” Gavin says, gesturing to his wet swim trunks, “and I’d like to sit down and talk.”  
  
Richard takes a deep breath. Considers the prospect. Seems pretty reasonable, truth be told. “Fine,” he says after a moment, and he follows Gavin back out of the zen garden, back past the pool, and into the house, trailing behind him with the weight back on his chest and shoulders and boots.  
  
  
Gavin leads him into the master suite. It feels foreign, Richard thinks, even though that makes no sense; he just hasn’t been here in a week. Maybe a little more. Since — fuck, since last Thursday. It’s been that long. He sits, leg jiggling nervously of its own accord, fiddling with his phone as he waits for Gavin to change into normal clothes.  
  
“Is there a reason you’re making me wait this long?” he calls in the direction of the walk-in closet, and gets no response in return. He takes a steadying breath, and calls up ValleyHound on his phone out of habit, refreshing aimlessly. Scrolls past a couple puff pieces, a thing on a mass exodus of Nasty Gal employees, and then:  
  
**_Animal Control Raids Stables at Agoura Hills Ranch Owned by Jack Barker_** _  
Filed to: Exclusive, Jack Barker, Hooli  
By: C.J. Cantwell  
  
It appears that Gavin Belson’s public relations affliction is contagious.  
  
Only a day and a half after we published recordings of voicemails left to us by the Hooli CIO, we’re back with even more dirt on one of his close Hooli colleagues. This time, it’s Jack Barker, head of Hooli Endframe, who has found himself in hot water. Animal Control and the SPCA were reportedly called to Barker’s ranch in the Los Angeles suburb of Agoura Hills on Friday night, following an anonymous complaint filed by a neighbor, alleging that Barker’s horses were loose and wreaking havoc on the neighborhood. Animal Control discovered several breeding stallions and a half dozen mares living in unspeakable filth, and Barker has been taken in for questioning by Santa Clara PD.  
  
We’ll have more on the story as it develops. Until then…_  
  
Richard doesn’t bother to read the rest. He looks up, in amazement and horror, at Gavin, who stands in front of him, now fully dressed, looking unbearably smug and pleased with himself.  
  
“Consider,” Gavin says, “the stallion.”  
  
Richard wants to scream. He has no idea where this is coming from, the surge of pent-up energy that pushes him up off the bed. He grabs Gavin by the collar of his shirt, pulls him closer, hands shaking.  
  
“What the fuck,” Richard mutters, and Gavin grins.  
  
“Listen,” says Gavin, but Richard shakes his head. He doesn’t loosen his grip, but takes half a step back, bringing Gavin’s face into better focus. He forces himself to make eye contact, swallows his nerves and tries to talk.  
  
“I got your letter,” he says shakily. “And I meant it. I never read the other one.” Jerks his head at where the envelope’s still lying unopened on the bed. “I don’t know what you mean by any of this. I just want you to be honest with me.”  
  
“I knew it was Barker,” Gavin says quietly. “Not from the very beginning, but when he showed up on our doorstep in Jackson Hole, I knew. Nobody else knew about the internal strife at Hooli they mentioned in the second article, you see? If Bag Head accidentally shot his mouth off, who cares. He didn’t substantiate anything that Barker didn’t already spoon-feed them.”  
  
“But why would Barker do that?” Richard asks, brow furrowed, working through it on his own. “Unless — your job. He wanted you to destroy himself.”  
  
Gavin nods, hums in approval. “Very good. He played me, Richard. He tried to use you to get to me. Why do you think I hauled ass out of Wyoming? It had nothing to do with manipulating you. It was all too much. Tulsa — I couldn’t think of a more zen place than the Midwest.”  
  
“But you knew I read the letters.”  
  
“Of course. And you know where I stand on that,” Gavin says solemnly. “Richard, everything I wrote in that letter to you was true. I value this. Perhaps more than is advisable, by any pragmatic sense, but…” He shakes his head, and offers a sheepish shrug as Richard tightens his grip on his collar. “Here we are. This is the best I can do. What’s the best you can do for me?”  
  
_What’s the best you can do for me?_ Stupid. So fucking stupid. There are a million different answers, a million different permutations for that, and in a million different multiverses Richard would cycle through all of them, from earnest to cocky and playful and back, be Humphrey Bogart and Han Solo and everyone else until he settled on his favorite. And then he’d use that. Only.  
  
Only.  
  
There’s one universe. There’s one universe and there’s one chance to not utterly fuck this up, and there’s exactly one stunningly, glaringly obvious next choice looking the both in the face as Richard licks his lips and takes a ragged breath and adjusts the way he’s holding Gavin’s shirt collar in his clammy palms. He’s pretty sure if he lets go, his sweat will have soaked through the fabric. Can’t have that. Can’t let go. Can’t show his hand here, literally.  
  
“I can do, um.” The words catch in his throat and he stammers and trips and he yanks at the power cord in his brain desperately. It doesn’t catch and he swallows and tries again. “I’m, uh, yeah. You think — I think — you —”  
  
“Richard…” Amused, Gavin is fucking amused, that’s not good.  
  
“Fuck,” Richard mutters, and then he shakes his head and with the rest of his strength, he yanks Gavin toward him and kisses him hot, messy, open-mouthed and desperate. Pulls him backward, stumbles when the backs of his knees hit the mattress and then Gavin’s just pushing him down and clambering down atop him. Their mouths never separate; their lips never part. It’s stupid and melodramatic and he senses, on some level, that this is exactly what Gavin wanted.  
  
“I’m sorry,” he mutters, over and over again as Gavin starts to kiss down his jaw to his neck and throat. “Jesus, I’m sorry, I was so stupid —”  
  
Gavin pulls away. “What the fuck are you talking about, Hendricks?”  
  
“You,” Richard says. “Me. Jesus. I assumed the worst.”  
  
Gavin fixes him with a small, wry smile. “You did warn me that your communication skills left something to be desired.” He sighs, pulls away and sits back, moving away on the bed. Richard starts to move toward him again, and Gavin holds up a hand. “One moment.”  
  
“Huh?” There’s a catch. Of course there’s a catch, there’s got to be one.  
  
“Don’t you want to know how I did it?”  
  
Gavin’s eyes are glinting, the smugness never quite left his face, and Richard groans, flopping backward on the bed to fix his stare up at the vaulted ceiling instead. “Are you literally just going to gloat at me instead of, like, sex. Is this what this is.”  
  
“I have a few more things to say _before_ we have sex,” Gavin says, and Richard groans again. “But yes, I suppose, ‘gloating’ might be a correct term for this small part of it.”  
  
“Fine.” Richard waves his hand through the air. “Go on. Gloat away.”  
  
“Well, the thing is, I’m quite proud of this,” Gavin says. He lies down beside Richard, and it feels odd and intimate, the two of them side by side, fully clothed on the immaculate bed. He holds up a hand and traces it through the air. “You see, I’m not the only one who knew about the conditions at Barker’s ranch near L.A. They’re not the best, though nothing too pressing — it all sounds much worse than it is. But I would never tip my hand by revealing _confidential_ information that could only be sourced to myself. But by facilitating a couple private, anonymous complaints from neighbors he’d paid off quite handsomely in the past…” He draws an ‘X’ in the air with one finger, then circles it. “Any one of the countless nosy gossip hounds in my employ might have tipped off Ms. Cantwell once Barker was taken in for questioning from the Hooli campus last night. My hands are clean, you see.”  
  
“Okay,” Richard says, and he nods. “So you think Barker’s gonna go to jail or whatever? Or is this more of, like, an embarrassment thing…?”  
  
“Well,” Gavin says, and he sounds so fucking pleased with himself that Richard offers a nervous giggle in anticipation of whatever he might say next. “Action Jack tends to be a bit, ah, trigger-happy when it comes to the civil courts. Honestly, Richard, if you thought I was bad when we started all this, you got off easy. Barker will sue the living shit out of Ms. Cantwell for defamation, mark my words.”  
  
“But everything she printed was true,” Richard says with dawning understanding. “And you said her legal team was basically, like, the lawyer version of The Expendables. So she’ll counter-sue.”  
  
“And they’ll keep going back and forth until there’s nothing left,” Gavin nods, and turns his face to Richard’s, eyes agleam. “Then again, who do you think will run out of money first? The blog, or the man who conceived those unbearable fucking business triangles? He’ll win. But in the end, they’ll both have lost.” He clicks his tongue and grins. “And that’s how you play the long game, Richard.”  
  
“Holy shit.” Richard blinks. “You were right. I’d rather be with you than against you. I mean, you _sucked_ at trying to ruin my company, like, r _eally sucked at it_ , but still —”  
  
“Anyway,” Gavin says, and he’s still smiling despite the backhanded compliment. “You see what I mean. It’s taken care of. For now, at least. And we’ll deal with what comes next.”  
  
Richard sits up, crosses his legs in front of him. He watches as Gavin does the same and shuffles around to face him, now much more serious. “Richard,” he says, his tone and demeanor more serious now. “I apologize if the past few weeks have been — trying for you. And I don’t often apologize, so take that while it’s hot.”  
  
“No.” Richard shakes his head. “Honestly, I’m the one who’s sorry. I fucked up. I should’ve just talked to you.”  
  
Gavin clears his throat stiffly. “I think it’s safe to say that we’ve both seen opportunities for improvement,” he says. “This has been a mess from top to bottom, but now that we’re on more even ground, so to speak…”  
  
“Actually, no, let me,” Richard says, shaking his head. And here he takes a deep breath, summons every ounce of courage he can manage, and spits it out. “I love you. I’m a fucking disaster and I just want to take everything back that’s happened these past couple weeks so that I could get there on my own, but maybe I wouldn’t have been able to, so… whatever. That’s where we’re at. You’re a fucking crazy person, but you’re right. I would so much rather be with you than against you, but even more than that, I guess I’d just… I’d _really_ rather be with you than with anyone else.” He blinks as he thinks over what he’s just said. It sounds like a contract negotiation, almost. Terms of endearment, or whatever. So he holds out his hand, awkward as it is. “Uh. Partners?”  
  
Gavin, _fucking Gavin_ , raises his eyebrows in bemused amazement, but, slowly, takes his hand. Shakes it. “Goddamnit, Richard,” he murmurs. “I love you, too.”  
  
Richard bites down on his lower lip. Squeezes Gavin’s hand a little tighter. Finally, slowly, dares to look up and look him in the eye.  
  
“Okay,” says Richard, and Gavin kisses him again, pulls him in by the hand before reaching up to clasp his face in both of his own, and then his shirt is over his head, flying across the room, and he can be happy with this.  
  
“Move in with me,” Gavin murmurs into his mouth, and Richard pulls away, one more time, just for safety’s sake.  
  
“Move in?” He repeats it, just to be sure. Not because he doesn’t want it — but just. To be sure.  
  
Gavin shakes his head, laughs a little. “What? Now that I’ve seen where you live — Richard, don’t overthink this. There’s plenty of room.”  
  
“This house is _massive_ ,” Richard agrees, making a face. “How do you not get lost in here?”  
  
“I manage. You’ll manage.” Gavin shrugs, squeezes Richard’s face with both hands. “I’m not asking for much. Not much _more_ , anyway. We don’t have to get married or anything. Not yet, at least.”  
  
“Yet?”  
  
“I mean, there may come a time when the threat of impending lawsuits requires it,” Gavin shrugs. Just off the cuff, like it’s nothing. “So that we won’t have to testify against each other, you know. But that’s a long way off. Barker and Cantwell have barely gotten to know each other. That’s not the point. Richard…”  
  
“Yeah,” Richard breathes, much too quickly. “Yeah. I’ll move in with you.”  
  
“Good,” says Gavin, simple as that, and then he moves back in, and Richard falls back onto his — _their_ — bed. And he doesn’t overthink it.

**Author's Note:**

> Thanks for all the inspiration, Peter Thiel. Don't sue me too.


End file.
